'Tambo: Life in an Andean VillagePerhaps the best way to sharpen one's power's of observation is to be a stranger in a strange land. Julia Meyerson was one such stranger during a year in the village of 'Tambo, Peru, where her husband was conducting anthropological fieldwork. Though sometimes overwhelmed by the differences between Quechua and North American culture, she still sought eagerly to understand the lifeways of 'Tambo and to find her place in the village. Her vivid observations, recorded in this field journal, admirably follow Henry James's advice: "Try to be one of the people upon whom nothing is lost." With an artist's eye, Meyerson records the daily life of 'Tambo—the cycles of planting and harvest, the round of religious and cultural festivals, her tentative beginnings of friendship and understanding with the Tambinos. The journal charts her progress from tolerated outsider to accepted friend as she and her husband learn and earn, the roles of daughter and son in their adopted family. With its wealth of ethnographic detail, especially concerning the lives of Andean women, 'Tambo will have great value for students of Latin American anthropology. In addition, scholars preparing to do fieldwork anywhere will find it a realistic account of both the hardships and the rewards of such study. |
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... Celestina a cup , and Celestina did the same and we both drank . The qowis were scalded by dunking them into a pot of boiling water , and most of the silky hair was pulled off ; what was left was mostly shaved off with a knife , though ...
... Celestina returned , she promptly gave me a little jug of chicha , and Andrés vanished , though he came back soon with a bottle of trago which Celestina warmed in a cup placed on top of the chicha jug over the fire , and we drank , out ...
... Celestina went in the early afternoon to bring the meal she had prepared that morning and very ceremoniously served the men working at the oven and the women who had helped , and we drank chicha and a little trago and ate bread hot from ...