​The social media sphere is all abuzz with the hashtag #justaddzebras this week, after John Oliver featured Bolivia’s traffic directing Cebras on his Sunday evening show. I have been a big fan of the Cebras, and even tried to join the “Cebra por un día” program, though research obligations foiled my attempt. I’ve also known a few young people who have worked as Cebras, who think of it, not as a job, but as a personal commitment. Needless to say, I immediately let out a gasp of pleasure, when I saw where John was going with his monologue, then retroactively tagged all my Instagram photos with Cebras.

​After a show on Trump’s budget, Oliver used the Cebras to lighten the air, which to be clear I not only support, but was thrilled by. ​But what I want to talk about is the lead up Oliver provided to the bit on the Cebras—he began by introducing Bolivia with an inset map in which Colombia was highlighted. Then pointed out that the highlighted country was not Bolivia, but Venezuela, Then switched the highlighting to Venezuela saying it was Colombia. And after a short bit switching highlighting around to different countries, claiming them as Bolivia, he finally showed the right country, and moved on. He pulled the same stunt on February 23, 2015, in which he showed Ecuador and Paraguay highlighted instead of the correct country, introducing a segment in which he notes that the only country that elects judges in a process similar to the United States is Bolivia. After showing the confusing map images, John comments, “This gag is never not going to be fun.”

And I’m sure it is fun for him. But I find it annoying. Perhaps it does have some educational value, but it also makes fun of and in doing so validates U.S. Americans’ utter lack of geographic knowledge about most of the world. Rather than viewers feeling as if they should know where Bolivia is, they laugh along at how silly it would be for them to know where this country is, that apparently has nothing to offer but examples of poorly designed judge selection and dancing animal-costumed traffic directors. This joins the unfortunate media portrayals of Bolivia in Sandra Bullock’s remake of the documentary Our Brand Is Crisis, in which the campaign of former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada is highlighted without any reference to the despicable human rights violations he oversaw the following year (See Linda Farthing’s review of the film here). It also joins the portrayls of Bolivia I highlighted in my Ph.D. Dissertation, including the film Horrible Bosses in which a character suggests chemical waste should be sent to Bolivia, and Woody Allen’s Manhattan which references “those barefoot kids from Bolivia who need foster parents” (p 190, find the full document here).
 
All together these portrayals highlight the incommensurability, exoticism, and Otherness of Bolivia as compared to the United States. It is a place of strange customs, a third world wasteland, and proof that U.S. politics are screwy, indicated by their similarity to this obviously (implicitly indexed) Banana Republic-esque underdeveloped nation. On one hand, John Oliver’s most recent #justaddzebras bit at least extends us beyond the political and “inequal” to focus on the lively culture of my favorite country. But his framing did the bit a disservice. Only by taking seriously the context of Bolivia as a complex nation with more to offer than “barefoot children” and shady politics, will the humor of the Cebras really work in productive ways. 

​I am not indigenous. I am a middle class child of parents of English, German, and Polish heritage. I’m third generation US by grandparent with the most recent arrival. I’m also a descendent of Mayflower passengers. For all intents and purposes I am white. I’ve been mistaken for being Brazilian on occasion, but that’s about as non-white as I get. And those mistaken moments were in South American nations in which Brazilian might be imagined as “more white” than the general population, so even considering those moments to indicate a level of non-white-appearing-ness, is doubtful.
 
I am not indigenous. At times I say I do research with indigenous people, but even that is only partially true. Mostly I study the meanings and significance of the concept of indigeneity. But I do know a fair number of people who consider themselves indigenous Americans, from Cherokee, Ojibwe, and Navajo to Aymara, Quechua, and Mapuche, and I value learning about their experiences. There is no doubt that I come from a world of privilege and they and their ancestors have been subject to extreme forms of structural and physical violence for centuries.
 
I say all this in order to make very clear that I do not know what it is like to be indigenous. But on this international day of the indigenous woman, I can’t help but think of the experiences I have had that help me access a small level of understanding of what it might be like for some indigenous women in the world today.
 
I grew up in a small town. It was the kind of place where your parents knew what kind of trouble you got into even before you got home from school in the afternoon. Inevitably, Mom or Dad knew someone who worked in the school, and news would travel fast, even before the days of social media. There are no traffic lights in town. There used to be one red blinking light at the biggest intersection, but when the state told the municipality they’d no longer pay for it’s upkeep we took it down. There’s no question you’ll run into someone you know, even walking to the post office or village hall. People can be insular in my small town. We don’t trust outsiders. We don’t trust anyone who doesn’t have at least 4 cousins (extended cousins count, of course) to vouch for them. It’s a conservative place. And sometimes we feel a little disenfranchised.
 
We are white and we are middle class. But politicians don’t seem to care whether we vote for them or not. We don’t get many state-sponsored works projects. Businesses don’t seem to think they’ll make much money in our town, though a Subway franchise and Dollar General store took a chance on us a few years ago, and they seem to be doing well.
 
Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve lived on the Navajo reservation. I’ve lived in an auto-constructed house in Alto Hospicio. We’ve still got it good. But I remember showing up to my first days of University classes at a prestigious private university, and feeling so embarrassed that I hadn’t taken any AP classes. I didn’t even know what AP stood for. And all this talk of 3s and 4s and 5s meant nothing to me. And GPAs that went beyond 4.0. It was all new. Suddenly, all the hard work I had done in my little public high school of 150 students seemed inadequate. I felt like I was out of my league.
 
But here is where my experience departs from that of many indigenous women who even make it to university classes. I didn’t look out of place (unlike Lara in Bolivia). My subtle Midwestern rural accent and idiolect were easy enough to shift (no more ‘may-sure’, I now say ‘meh-sure’, no more ‘pop,’ it’s ‘soda’ now). And I may have had a few bizarre customs like cow chip bingo, but these were easy to turn into a funny anecdote. My assimilation was quick and easy.
 
I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished in life, and I’m proud of the town I came from. But I recognize the incongruence of my urban life with my rural upbringing. I never truly feel ‘in my place’. In London, I long to hear a midwestern drawl, all while being secretly happy that I can pull off a ‘sorry’ without alerting anyone to my country of origin. In New York, I feel at once at home and reviled by hipsters in Carhartts. In Santiago, I try to explain why they Chilean campo feels so oppressive but in the US being in the country makes me feel so free. I can only imagine the ways that indigenous women feel between two worlds in their own ways if and when they move to the city or pursue higher education.
 
So, today, on this international day of the indigenous woman, I salute all indigenous women. Those who work in their natal communities, and those who have left them to make themselves better in the world or make the world a better place. I cannot imagine the challenges they face, but my own experiences make it quite clear that their feats are not easy ones. I so admire the strength I see in native women fighting back against oppression in the forms of colonialism, patriarchy, environmental racism, and other struggles. Viva la mujer indígena! 

​I don’t recall exactly how it began, but I was “la gringa.” Somewhere during my first year in Iquique, Chile, my two best friends began calling me as such, and soon hearing my given name from them just sounded wrong. They were a gay couple, both trained in derechos (law). Guillermo worked for the national Consulario—the institution that oversees government finances, and Cristian for la Defensoria del Pueblo—something like a public defense organization. Cristian had lived in the United States during a few different stints, and both had plans to pursue graduate education abroad.
 
When I left Iquique after two years to relocate to Santiago, I was particularly sad about leaving them behind. Not only had they been dear friends, confidants, Chilean history lesson providers, and cooking instructors, but they had also opened their home to me several times when I either physically needed a place to stay, or was so emotionally wraught from fieldwork that I needed an escape. But within a few months, Guillermo, originally from Santiago, had secured a position in the central office of the Consulario, and Cristian was interviewing for jobs in the metropolitan region as well. By summer we were reunited.
 
And while I had been indeed the gringa in Iquique—even more-so in the marginal satellite city of Alto Hospicio where I had lived and done my research, suddenly in Santiago I easily passed as someone who “belonged.” Perhaps at first glance it was clear I was not Chilean, and certainly confirmed when I began to speak with my muddled accent, and overly forced slang. But there were so many of us foreigners around that I was finally breathing sighs of relief that I was unremarkable. Here, gringa made less sense, but the nickname persisted. While I had always taken it as a term of endearment, it was questioned more in Santiago. “Aren’t you offended?” my Colombian apartment-mate would ask. But slowly he began calling me “gringa” as well. As did my boss, who had also become something of a friend. I heard “oye, Gringa” dozens of times each day, and received social media messages and emails addressed as such in addition.
 
And then my time in Chile ended. Before taking that long flight back to Chicago, I went to visit Bolivia, the place of my Ph.D. fieldwork, and suddenly I went back to being Nelly, or “la doctora.” My friend Gustavo and I went from La Paz to visit Cochabamba for a weekend, and we met up with a large group of friends, most of whom I had known several years earlier in La Paz. But there were some newcomers, a group of young people from Santiago who were visiting as well. As we all paraded around a Cochabamba supermarket contemplating what to grill that Saturday afternoon, I heard a Chilean accented voice shout, “Oye, Gringa!” I instinctively looked up, only seconds later wondering how this man knew I would respond to that name. Is it just that Chileans all call people gringos? Am I so very obviously Estadounidense that calling me anything else doesn’t seem to be an option, at least to someone who does not remember my name? And as I looked around for the voice’s owner, contemplating these possibilities, I realized he was not speaking to me, but to the Argentine women who was traveling with them.
 
Over the course of the weekend I never learned the Argentine’s given name, because she was exclusively referred to as Gringa. She was tall and had half of her hair died blonde. The other half of her head was shaven to buzz cut. She had a deep laugh and bright colored Adidas high top shoes that complimented her day-glow t shirt. I could easily imagine her as the stereotypical Argentine traveler juggling small balls or doing gymnastics at a traffic light in another South American country. And the name that had for so long felt so singularly mine, suddenly felt cheapened. If any foreigner could be a gringa, just because her skin was light, maybe it wasn’t a term of endearment. I never questioned Guillermo and Cristian’s motives, but somehow that word no longer felt like home.
 
Mary Weismantel writes, “Foreigners—a category that includes Latin American visitors as well—are gringos, but they are members of the same race as local whites.” Gringa will always be special to me, even as I write about the politics of whiteness in places like Iquique, La Paz, and Santiago. But I also must remember, it is not just a name, but a positionality, and its meaning…like chola, indian, indigenous person, black, person of color, or any other racialized naming form…is always historically, contextually, and politically dependent. 

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.

I am something of a suspicious character in Alto Hospicio. First, I visibly stand out. As a very light skinned person of Polish, German, and English ancestry, I simply look very different from most of the residents of Alto Hospicio who are some combination of Spanish, Indigenous Aymara, Quechua, or Mapuche, Afrocaribbean, and/or Chinese ancestry. I am catcalled quite often, even while walking to the supermarket midday. These yells usually reference the fact that I am visibly different. “Gringa,” “blanca,” [whitey] and even “extranjera” [foreigner] are the most usual shouts. I hear. Even in less harassing ways, I’ve been pointed out on the street, as happened my first week in Alto Hospicio, walking along the commercial center a woman stopped in front of me simply to tell me “You look North American!” scurrying away before I could respond. 

maybe I look too much like her?

Beyond the striking impression of my physical appearance, I was untrustworthy as a single woman. Having no family in the area, not to mention a male partner or children was often a red flag for people. Even though many people I met had left family behind in other countries or regions of Chile when migrating to the area, they usually moved with a least one family member or friend. In a lot of ways, my solitariness kept me solitary.

As I got to know people, at times I felt I was being given a test. A colleague at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile had connected me with some politically active students in Alto Hospicio, and they invited me to help put up posters for a candidate for local representative before the elections in November 2013. I met Juan in the evening, outside one of the local schools where we made small talk before they others arrived. He asked me about my opinions on the Occupy Movement in the United States, and I spoke frankly, though keeping in mind his connections to Chilean Student movements. We continued talking about US politics and he asked if I had been very involved during my time in graduate school in Washington, DC. He asked about my support for President Barak Obama. And he asked very detailed questions about who I worked for, where funding for the research came from, and to what institutions the results would be reported. Eventually the other poster hangers arrived and we walked a few blocks to the home of his friend, where we were to mix up the paste for the hangings. As he introduced me to the group, he explained that I was “a trusted friend.” So I had passed the test.

Other tests of my trustworthiness took much longer. The first person I got to know outside of my apartment complex was Miguel, the administrator for the Alto Hospicio group I first joined on Facebook. Yet, it took over two months of online conversations before we met in person. Our chats at first were about the project, then about anthropology in general, while I asked him about his job at a mine in the altiplano and about his family. Later we conversed about television shows, movies, sports, and other hobbies. Eventually he told me funny stories about what his friends had done while drunk. I tried to reciprocate and realized my friends were far less rambunctious than his. Eventually, he invited me out with a group of friends to a dance bar in Iquique, and later I became friendly with his sister Lucia and her husband, often being invited to eat lunch in their home. Eventually one afternoon, sipping strawberry-flavored soda and finishing the noodles and tuna on my plate, Lucia asked Miguel how we met. He launched into a long story of seeing my post on the Facebook group site and being suspicious of it. He clicked on my Facebook profile and thought “What is a gringa like this doing in Alto Hospicio?” But his curiosity prevailed and he engaged me in conversation. As he recounted the story to his sister he eventually arrived at the night we had gone to the dance bar. “I was nervous standing outside the apartment, because I didn’t know what to expect. We had talked enough that I was pretty sure she was a real person, but I was still nervous. I thought maybe she wasn’t real. Maybe it was a fake profile. But then I saw her walking toward me and I just remember being really relieved.” 

To be clear, I was always treated with kindness and respect by the luchadores while training and performing. Of course there was always an element of tension around issues of gender and sexuality. I was a white woman, highly educated, from a middle-class background in the United States. I wrestled with working-class mestizo men from La Paz and El Alto, of varying ages. Our relationships were always professional. Occasionally one would invite me to dinner at his house, and I would have to weigh several factors—our interactions up to that point, the time he had suggested, whether other people would be present, and what I might know about his current familial and romantic situation—before deciding whether to accept or reject. 

I rejected a request from a 50 year old luchador to accompany his family to a festival that would go late in the night, but agreed to meet him for tea later in a public restaurant in El Alto, trying not to alienate him to the detriment of my research. I accepted an invitation to a 27th birthday party for another luchador, which took place in a bar, and to which several of the other luchadoras were invited. I hoped this would allow us to be friends more than just wrestlers who train together. He tried to kiss me goodnight, but I quickly slipped away, and neither of us ever mentioned it again.

These experiences were in part because I was doing research in a male-dominated social setting. Indeed, in many ways, they served to inform my analyses of what Bolivian women might experience in their own involvement in wrestling. Of course my gringa-ness, foreignness, and lack of familial ties to anyone in the group make my situation slightly different. But these instances still tell us something about gender relations within the context.

But these experiences are not related just to my subject matter. In my current research, I have to be wary, not only of walking alone at night in Alto Hospicio, but also of the advances of police officers and public city officials when they send me non-work related Whatsapp messages. I have spoken with countless women about their similar experiences, one of whom was even evicted from her apartment in her fieldsite in a small conservative Middle Eastern  area after refusing the advances of her landlord.

To say that these experiences are frustrating is an understatement. They are not just an annoyance of daily life, but they profoundly impact one’s ability to do research, and maintain community ties. In just three short days it will be the two-year anniversary of the day I finished fieldwork. Yet I still feel the effects of these types of gendered relations.

Today I received a facebook message from one of the more senior and well respected luchadores in La Paz. At first I was flattered to receive a message because he asked when I will be wrestling again. “Quiero venir a verte” [I want to come watch you]. But the conversation quickly turned

*Pseudonym

And with that I most likely lost an important contact. Of course, I’m in a better position now, because my fieldwork is finished, some of it is published, and I’ve moved on to a new project. But I’m stuck now in a position of whether I even mention this to Jorge*, my former wrestling partner, and a fairly good friend. Do I continue as a friend always wondering if he is telling others that I am something of a significant other or sexual plaything to him? Do I mention it to him and confront the problem head on, most likely with little benefit either personally or professionally? Or do I assume what this older luchador said to be correct and silently stop being his friend.

I realize this is the type of problem many anthropologists face, regardless of gender, regardless of region, and regardless of topic. But as I recently wrote about the perception of women anthropologists flirting, extroverted actions of men are interpreted differently than those by women. This is something that will not be “solved” easily, particularly when we consider that many times this happens in places where there is less awareness of “rape culture,” less ability for women to participate in social life, and more complicated relationships between race, class, cosmopolitanism, and locality. I do intend to keep up a conversation about it though. 

a shorter version of this post appears on the WHY WE POST blog at University College London

Sometimes, leaving “the field” and returning can be incredibly productive. Sometimes it is because it gives you time to think and plan, while in a different mindset. Other times, it is because the return throws differences into stark relief with the life one leads in other places.

Both have been true for me in the last three days. After spending a month at University College London with my colleagues, I have a much better grasp on where The Global Social Media Impact Study is going, where my part fits in, and how it relates to the other eight fieldsites involved.

But what is even more impressionable, possibly even phenomenologically so, is the sense of aesthetics that I immediately notice upon returning. In London I lived in a quaint house with IKEA furniture, on a quiet little lane in a central suburb with plenty of independently owned shops on the high street. I wore my favorite uniform—1960s style shift dresses, leggings, and mid-calf height boots—almost every day. I got a haircut, and bought new mascara, and an old guilty pleasure of Body Shop tea tree oil face wash (fully acknowledging the problematic politics of the Body Shop).

In essence I lived, looked, and thus felt, a little more like myself. The nine of us on the project collectively wrote a blog on “real methods in anthropology” wherein we describe the ways we are a bit like chameleons, and do certain things to more closely fit in as we live in our fieldsites. While this may appear as “inauthentic” to some people, we know that the self in everyday life is always a performance (see Goffman 1959), and that people are always a different version of themselves in different contexts. Yet, returning to Alto Hospicio has reminded me just how different this self is from the selves I perform in Chicago, Washington DC, La Paz, and London.

Being away has also helped me to pinpoint what it is about this place that makes me so different, and perhaps fortunately, I think what I’ve realized has quite extensive impacts for my research as well. Put simply, the aesthetics of Alto Hospicio are incredibly different from those in the other cities where I like to spend time. 

At first glance, I think to myself ‘This place has no sense of aesthetics.’ But obviously this is not true. Plenty of people tell me that they have personal styles and tastes. Houses are often painted bright colors on the outside and decorated with plenty of artificial flowers on the inside. The new municipal building in the city is architecturally pleasing. Cars are clearly modified with exterior lights, and decals. Clothing ranges from black tshirts displaying heavy metal band names to sunny beach attire. These are styles, not just reflections of function.

Indeed, to me, these styles appear as an absence. This has caused me to ruminate on what makes “middle class North Atlantic” style so different. And my initial supposition, is that it has something to do with nostalgia. My parents live in an Arts and Crafts era bungalow and have thus decorated the place in furniture reflecting that era. My best friend is slightly obsessed with Danish Mid-Century Modern design, which has influenced his furniture, clothing, and even the brand of headphones he owns. As a child, my favorite book--Anne of Green Gables—created a desire for my bedroom to have a certain country Victorian feel to it. And since my early teens I’ve enjoyed sifting through second hand shops for vintage clothing (often influenced by tv shows, from the Brady Bunch, to the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and most recently Mad Men). 

In many ways we (in the cosmopolitan centers I know well) live in an age of nostalgia, however convoluted this form of nostalgia may be. We live in the age of Steampunk and Hipsters. A recent trip with my sister to the H&M clothing store in her Madrid neighborhood revealed hundreds of square feet of fashion that reminded me of my high school closet (the mid-late 1990s, for anyone who’s counting). Instagram, which appears in the square format reminiscent of now-defunct Polaroid photos, offers a plethora of filters with names like, Lo Fi and 1977 that presumably (and in my opinion, often successfully) give photos an aesthetic quality similar to those home photos of the 1960s-80s. Films like Wes Anderson's and Spike Jonze's (aside from his frequent forays into Jackass-ery) trade in nostalgic art design, and even more mainstream movies like American Hustle and The Great Gatsby use their historical settings to forefront nostalgic aesthetics. Similarly, music-of which I represent possibly the least qualified person in the world to analyze-as of late (or maybe for much longer?) has seen plenty of popular acts that pull from eras gone by (ie Sharon Van Etten, , or that damn Pharmakon remake of Nancy Sinatra/Sonny & Cher's 'Bang Bang' that no one else seems to be getting tired of). Of course, these examples are not coincidental. Indeed, nostalgia is a calculated art produced in mass by Ad executives. 

This is not to say that all aesthetics in the North Atlantic are a product of nostalgia. There are others that reflect “foreign influence” such as Japanese inspired home interiors, or Ikea minimalism. Plenty of clothing in the “latest style” is made from new synthetic fabrics in styles that have not been broached in previous eras. And much recent architecture and car design has reflected 'green' or 'eco aesthetics,' that combines cuteness (pastel colors), efficiency (small=more fuel efficient), aerodynamics, functionality (hatchbacks carry more in a smaller space), and a sense of futurism. Yet, often, to me these types of style also appear as a sort of nostalgia for former visions of the future, as they appear in representations such as The Jetsons or 2001: A Space Odyssey (but maybe that’s just me?).

In sum, these forms of nostalgia appear as absent in Alto Hospicio. Instagram photos present uninspired subjects in mundane settings without much attention to the filters or other enhancements available in the application. Facebook posts—both photos and text—appear to lack curation. One person’s clothing style is indistinguishable from the next (at least to my eyes). Houses each equally resemble lego blocks (as Daniel Miller commented to me). And even the city’s parks and plazas do very little to appear as natural refuges from city life.

The challenge however, is to first, find a way of describing this form of aesthetics without implicitly privileging the forms of North Atlantic aesthetics I described earlier, both in language and ideology. And second, to find what are the underlying currents that define these forms of aesthetics that are present. I certainly would not characterize the aesthetics of Alto Hospicio as a form of Protestant asceticism (see Weber 1958). But it is a new city, so perhaps it would be naïve to think that nostalgia would be an important structure of feeling there. Most families in Alto Hospicio are working-class so frugality and functionality may be an important part of aesthetics.

I am more than welcome to comments that might propose different forms of aesthetics, whether they be possibilities for Alto Hospicio, or presented in contrast to what I have outlined here!

Some time last week the news broke that the expected high for today would be -11 F (-24 C). This seemed preposterous to me. Yet, in this little town of 2000 people, the staples quickly disappeared off the shelves of our small Independent Grocers’ Association store. The liquor section of the town’s one gas station looked more and more picked over every day.

Yesterday, I woke up to falling snow. It kept going all day. My uncle came over twice from across town with his snowblower to clear the driveway. It was 6 F (-14 C) then. He said the snow was a good thing. It would insulate the ground from the cold and hopefully pipes wouldn’t burst. My dad started clearing out the garage which he had been using as a work space to refinish some wood from our nearly-100 year old house. He got enough cleared out to put one of the two family cars inside.

At 5pm, when it was 3 F (-16 C), I went with my dad to fill up the gas tanks of both cars. My uncle had told him the gas station, which is usually open 24 hours would close at 6, so we had to get in just under the wire. As we slowly drove the ½ mile home, fishtailing all the way, we avoided any streets where there was even a glimmer of headlights. We passed a man walking home from the store and offered him a ride but we were too late. He was only a half block from his home. We got home and cracked open a bottle of wine, happy the power was still functioning and both cable tv and internet were fine. My uncle posted on facebook “Snow blower - check. Generator with extra gas - check. Food stashed - check. Fireplace on -check. Chili for dinner - check. Board games - check. Whiskey- check. Bring on the 10 inches of snow and -30!”

When I woke up this morning my smartphone told me it was -17 F (-27 C). I scrolled through facebook. A former professor in Chicago quoted a pedestrian interviewed by a news crew: “The 1st 10 minutes, you think, 'it's not so bad.' The next 10 minutes, your face starts to burn. Then, you start to ask, 'Why did I ever decide to live in Chicago?” A friend from high school warned that highway plow crews had given up. They would do one last round looking for stranded drivers then head home. Several people announced closings or asked about specific companies. The insurance company that has its corporate headquarters in “the big city” of 100,000 that is 10 miles away was closed for the day. The candy factory and car manufacturing plant were not. Another high school friend posted a video of himself throwing a bucket of water into the cold air and it instantly turning to snow. The local restaurant announced it would not be open for breakfast but hoped to open at 11 for lunch with vegetable soup and turkey sandwiches for the daily special.

I decided, mostly based on the pedestrian’s comments on the news, that this was probably my only chance in my life to experience temperatures so cold and I should probably go out. I pulled on long johns, 2 pairs of socks, my flannel pajamas, courduroy overalls, my Bolivian alpaca sweater, my coat that resembles a sleeping bag with a hood, a hat, a scarf, two pairs of gloves, snowboots, and sunglasses. I set the timer on my phone to see how long it would be enjoyable. I walked to the side yard and took a selfie. I went around the perimeter of the yard. My torso was still toasty, but my eyes were watering and my legs between the top of my boots and the bottom of my coat were chilly. I went inside and found it had been 3 ½ minutes. Not bad, I thought.

Later, the family discovered, via my uncle’s photos on Facebook, that the town water tower was leaking. The water tower is only two blocks from our house, so we all redressed in 100 layers and walked to see it. It did, indeed, have giant ice cycles hanging from it. The town volunteer firefighters had roped off the area around it, to avoid injury if the giant icecycles were to fall.  I of course took some pictures, and upon returning home, posted them to facebook. It was there that I saw my friend David wrote “Anyone need anything from town [the nearby city of 100,000]? Shoot me a txt or call. Heading to town in a few minutes.” A few people had replied simply with requests that he be careful. One neighbor asked him to bring charcoal.

In essence, on this day that felt so unusual, people used Facebook, not only to strengthen the sense of community one experiences in a “crisis,” but also to record their experiences. In many ways, writing about your stockpile of resources, quoting commentary on the news, and even offering delivery of products from “town,” are a way of performing and remembering this somewhat exciting experience. It first a performance of collegiality, sharing the moment with those who are also experiencing it, but not physically present with you. With no one wanting to go outside, and the street unnavigatable for cars, most people were rather solitary at home. Yet Facebook provided a way to understand the extreme cold as something collectively lived. But at the same time, people were performing for themselves. They were capturing their memories of the day in small snippets, putting on public record in order to remember their first thoughts as -17F air hit their exposed face, what they felt was important to keep handy, and the way they helped their neighbors on a supply run to “town.” Facebook served as a repository of experience that was simultaneously personal and collective. And as such, is an important way of making memory.

In the early days, they each brought notes they had collected while browsing at Barnes and Noble. Now, using Kindles or iPads, they check out their personalized recommendations on Amazon.com, noting in particular pages counts for each electronic edition of the book, as they balance a glass of wine in the other hand. These seven women, between the ages of 50 and 60 live in a town of 2,000 people nestled in Midwestern United States farming country. They are middle class women who teach elementary school, work as hospital administrators, or have recently retired from corporate insurance company jobs. All have grown children and though some are previously divorced, all are married now. 

These group meetings, though specifically organized around reading and discussion, always involve wine, politically charged discussions (one woman left the group after criticizing the others for being too liberal), and gossip. Even today, rather than finding out about life events on Facebook, I often find out about former high school classmates’ engagements or expected children through these women’s exchanges of information. And while these are great topics, the best gossip for them are younger men and women’s extramarital affairs. “We’re old and lead boring lives,” states Jane, with one son living nearby and the other several hours away. “We have to live vicariously through other people’s scandals.” Their favorite was when a neighbor of Katherine, a mother of two daughters who now live abroad, split with his young wife and moved in with the older and in their judgment, “trashier” woman across the street. They began referring to her as the “real housewife” of the town, referencing the popular Bravo channel reality television shows about wealthy women in cities around the United States. When the neighbor’s divorce was final and he moved with his new girlfriend to a nearby town, they were all disappointed that their first-row seat to the drama no longer existed. 

Today, at a casual gathering for lunch, these same seven women drank coffee, ate quiche, and talked about Facebook. More accurately, one of the women described it as “bitching.” “I don’t care that your little Timmy lost his first tooth. I don’t need to see a picture of that!” said Katherine, an elementary school teacher. They complained about too many pictures of food, and status updates about cooking. “I mean, if they’re a famous chef fine. But I’m sorry, Mr. Smith from the pharmacy, I just really don’t care that you’re cooking sausage for dinner tonight” retorted Lucinda, whose two daughters, their husbands, and her three grandchildren both live in the suburbs of Chicago. She continued, “But that’s better than the ones who post really exciting things and just make you feel bad about yourself: Oh great, you went on vacation in Jamaica. Oh what a beautiful new pool you had put in. Oh, and your daughter graduated from law school. Give me a break!” “But we still look at it” shouted Lucinda’s sister Louise. “Why?” “Well,” chimed in Marlene—whose four children are spread from across town to across the country, “we have to keep tabs on them.” Then imitating mouse clicks she sneered, “What’s that bitch up to today/” Lucinda added, “Plus when I get Christmas letters in the mail I know which ones I just really don’t want to read. The ones with Caribbean vacations and kids with doctors just go straight in the garbage. I don’t need them making me feel bad about myself!” 

It’s been a common finding among the fieldsites of the Global Social Media Impact Study, that parents primarily use Facebook to keep in touch with their children (you can find a number of examples on the blog). To an extent this is true among these women, many of whom have children and grandchildren far away. They post silly videos of grandkids, and comment on their daughters’ and sons’ photos and status messages. One who is something of a fictive aunt to me constantly chides my posting on Facebook in Spanish, because she can’t understand what I say. Though usually when she does the other women offer to show her the translate button that automatically appears. But as their conversation over lunch reveals, Facebook is also a venue for keeping tabs on the community. They learn the gossip they later discuss in person. 

As Henry Jenkins describes in the film Teenage Paparazzo, “When we gossip about someone, the person we're gossiping about is actually less important than the exchange that takes place between us. We’re using that other person—the celebrity, the town whore, or whatever—as a vehicle for us to share values with each other, to sort through central issues.

In many ways, the women use information from facebook to police the boundaries of their in-group, as well as what is acceptable social behavior and what is not. Though they all do so good-naturedly, and would never want this information to be learned by those they criticize, this gossip and criticism form a major part of their friendship bonds with each other. As such, social networking, and Facebook in particular contribute to a major way that these women learn information about the community, to be discussed in person.

As the AAA (American Anthropological Association) annual conference descended upon Chicago a few weeks ago, the blogosphere and twittersphere (are those words?) were abuzz with everything even remotely anthropological. My favorite post of all, not surprisingly came from Savage Minds, and was titled “Conference Chic, or, How to Dress Like an Anthropologist.”

Now, this is not the first time I’ve scooped Savage Minds (the post in question)...But back in February 2012, I wrote a fieldnote titled “How to Dress like a Tattoo Artist.” Therein, I analyzed, discussed, and lightheartedly critiqued the ways my tattoo artist friends in La Paz dress. I concluded that “their bodies, in some ways more than other [people’s bodies], are obviously constructed…but though the specifics might differ, their bodies are constructed through the same processes as everyone else’s.” 

These processes include, as outlined by Donald Lowe (2005), the work we do, the commodities we consume, and the politics of gender and sexuality [and I would add religion, race, class, etc, etc] to which we ascribe or aspire. In other words, these bodies (all bodies) flexibly accumulate markers through consumption, production and processes of identification. And though obviously much of this works through commodified symbols, most anthropologists are aware of, if not actively critiquing, the contradictions of the capitalist system and the social problems associated with consumptive practices of the late modern era. In short, many of us would not be caught dead in the middle of an anthro conference wearing something that everyone knows was made under unfair labor conditions, mass-marketed, cost more than a day’s salary, or looks too ‘mainstream.’ 

Thus, the non-commodified symbols carry perhaps more weight with anthropologists than with many other groups (though even with both tattoo artists and backpackers in South America, these are incredibly important). Savage minds lists six categories of anthropological fashion/fashion concern: “anthropological” fieldsite flair, professional-but-not-too-professional balance, critique of capitalism and consumerism, career-stage, subdisciplinary distinctions, and scarves. 

Yes, scarves get their own category, as they well should.

For me, the two that most reflect what I wrote about tatuadores are fieldsite flair and the critique of consumptive practices (though I think professional balance could be a subset of this). Both are in the service of authentification, but work in different ways. 

Firstly, to keep in mind the problems that arise from the ubiquitous consumptive practices of late-modern capitalism is not only about acknowledging global inequalities and all of the exploitation (of people, non-human animals, and natural resources) that is necessary to produce and sustain such a system of production and consumption (and that obviously is a very important part of it), but is also about performing as a person who is concerned about these things. Because as anthropologists, at least in this century, we are concerned with issues of social justice, to be ignorant or dismissive of these problems would mark one as uncritical, and thus something of a not so great anthropologist. Thus, to dress smartly, thoughtfully, but not entirely professionally, and certainly not in a way that overtly supports unjust productive and consumptive conditions, is to perform authentication (Bucholtz and Hall 2005:500) as an anthropologist. 

The flair component of dress performs authentication of another requirement of anthropology: fieldwork. Because anthropology prides itself on use of ethnography, long-term engagement with a fieldsite, and integration into communities in which we study, to wear things that come from or reflect the places we work becomes an important performance as well. Of course at times these things remind us of those to whose kindness and help we owe our information and lifework. But they also are something of a symbol to show to others not only where we work, but it’s importance to us, and that yes, we actually spent enough time in the field to find a beautiful stone necklace, to acquire a beautifully embroidered blouse, or even to be given a tshirt promoting a local business. 

And so, in the ways we dress, anthropologists often reflect the twin pillars of anthropology: theory and practice. Savage Minds quotes Carla Jones: “I suppose it is unsurprising that anthropologists are invested in what we wear at AAA, after all this is our social community. Who better than we understand that social meaning is generated through symbols?” Like the very tattoos that tatuadores wear, some symbols are important because of the social capital they connote, rather than their economic worth (use value rather than exchange value to put things in Marx’s terms).

And scarves are just important because they are awesome.

And now, as a nod to perhaps my only consistent blog reader, I shall end with a question. What do you wear (at academic conferences or otherwise) that involves some sort of symbol? Is it conscious or ingrained that you do so? And what do you definitely not wear because of what it symbolizes?


References:

Bucholtz, Mary and Kira Hall
2005 Identity and Interaction: A Sociocultural Linguistic Approach. Discourse Studies 7(4-5):585-614.

Lowe, Donald M.
1995 The Body in Late-Capitalist USA. Durham: Duke University Press.

Further reading:

Adkins, Lisa and Celia Lury
1999  The Labour of Identity: Performing Identities, Performing Economies. Economy and Society 28(4):598-614. 

Atluri, Tara
2009  Lighten Up?! Humour, Race, and Da Off Colour Joke of Ali G. Media, Culture, & Society 31(2):197-214

Halberstam, J.
1998  Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press.

Mort, Frank
1998  Cityscapes: Consumption, Masculinities and the Mapping of London since 1950. Urban Studies 35(5-6):889-907.
1995  Archaeologies of City Life: Commerical Culture, Masculinity, and Spatial Relations in 1980s London. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13:573-590.