'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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... celebrations is called a cargo , and here in ' Tambo , each festival cargo belongs to a specific ayllu . Within the ayllu , the burden of respon- sibility for the celebration of the festival falls to an individual member of the ayllu ...
... celebration and a lot of people ; the only other store in ' Tambo , that of Goyo and Vinicio Coronel , was closed , its proprietors gone to Cusco . Baltazar sat in our house with us early in the morning , drinking trago to inaugurate ...
... celebrate the holiday , even though it was not his ayllu's festival , and after the procession , he retired to the house to continue his private celebration , coaxing Gary to buy trago . That was not difficult : Baltazar is always happy ...