'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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... chicha . The chicha drunk daily is normally very mild , though naturally it grows stronger as fermentation continues until the supply in the jars is gone , and chicha made for festivals is sometimes deliberately allowed to fer- ment to ...
... chicha cup , reviving all of our vicarious humilia- tion : why should they hide their chicha ? We , perhaps out of some per- verse anthropologists ' pride , were delighted to be drinking chicha to celebrate my birthday and would have ...
... chicha , served now in horns , from the plastic jugs we had brought with us . Finally Vicentina returned , and Teresa offered her some chicha- a little dig at the absent hostess : here we had been , sitting at her house , having to ...