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Picking up from the discussion of credentials and intuition, we look more closely at the divisions and collusions of phatic and communicative labor that structure bureaucratic forms of encounter. These structures render specific moments that seem to isolate pairs of communicants as if a given contact pair were the natural configuration, the only one upon which to model all communication. In fact, most communication involves multiple parties, is multiply embedded, crosses multiple circles of attention, and sends out chains of multiple interpretants (like the cover of this book). The trick to the dyadic illusion is to distract from all the other, ongoing communications or channels, as well as from the work that has made such a moment of contact possible or necessary. The dyad who makes contact across a border or a frame. Such dyad/frame configurations, infused with repetitions of signs and qualia that signal not only paranoia but also the virtues of scientific transcendence or artistic spiritualty, still rules as a metaphor for all communication.

Using a cooking program viewing event, the conclusion reiterates how Moroccan sociality was calibrated through everyday talk about media and language. Just as a tagine (Moroccan stew and the clay pot in which it is cooked) has become a model or emblem of Moroccanness, and there are many ways and ingredients to make a tagine recognized as Moroccan, so too are there varied ways of relating semiotic mediation to Moroccanness. Fassis mobilized their heightened awareness and concern about channel/medium failures to do all kinds of uncoordinated political participation and sociality work, the phatic labor of Moroccanness.

This chapter explores the motivations for innovation adoption in the past and present. It is built around a discussion of the complicated ways indigenous people incorporated (some) European materials into their material culture through a culturally contingent process of re-definition and negotiation. This fraught process is contrasted with common-sense adoption narratives built around a scaffolding of economic rationalism and superior functionality. The chapter argues against this sort of post hoc ergo propter hoc interpretation, suggesting instead that the choice to adopt an innovation is best understood through the lens of specific social and interpersonal relationships. In order to shift our perspective away from more traditional adoption narratives focused on influential or aggrandizing male elites, the chapter looks at shifting patterns of community and identity linked together by women and children through phatic labor. The role of kin – biological and fictive – is emphasized.