A lot of what has been in these fieldnotes lately has come from drafts of chapters that will eventually (in January 2016) become my book about social media in Alto Hospicio. I've been out of the field for 5 months and writing profusely. But tomorrow, I return. I'll still be writing chapters, and then editing the complete draft while in the field, but in a lot of ways, returning to the field represents a complete shift of mindset. Suddenly writing doesn't feel like my job. I don't "go to work." Rather, I go to the kitchen table and open my laptop. Or who knows if I will even have a table. It may be sit on the bed or on the floor and open my laptop. Fortunately, I decided some time ago, that finishing any major work shall be rewarded with a massage at Hotel Europa in La Paz. 

It's not standard practice, but both this project and the research that led to my PhD have happened in this way. I've been in and out of the field, and end up writing significant portions of the ethnography while in the field. For me this has been helpful. When you need to check a fact, you text or visit a friend. When you need a little more information, it only takes a few hours to set up a short interview. While it might be harder to get into the headspace of writing while in the field, it has its advantages. 

So, I'm not sure what will end up in these fieldnotes for the next few months (until I move to Santiago in June for the rest of my postdoc residency), but it will certainly reflect, in its own way, the actual space in which I'm writing. And I suppose that's one thing I appreciate about anthropology. That's not something to be overcome but something to learn from.

As many entries in the blog affirm, local cultural aspects are often reflected or made even more visual on social media. As I have written before of my fieldsite, there is a certain normativity that pervades social life. Material goods such as homes, clothing, electronics, and even food all fall within an “acceptable” range of normality. No one is trying to keep up with Joneses, because there’s no need. Instead the Joneses and the Smiths and the Rodriguezes and the Correas all outwardly exhibit pretty much the same level of consumerism. Work and salary similarly fall within a circumscribed set of opportunities, and because there is little market for advanced degrees, technical education or a 2 year post-secondary degree is usually the highest one will achieve academically. This acceptance of normativity is apparent on social media as well.

One particularly amusing example of this type of acceptance is especially apparent from a certain style of meme that overwhelmed Facebook in October of 2014. These “Rana René” (Kermit the Frog, in English) memes expressed a sense of abandoned aspirations. In these memes, the frog expresses desire for something—a better physique, nicer material goods, a better family- or love-life—but concludes that it is unlikely to happen, and that “se me pasa,” “I get over it.”