'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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... finally tell him we were tired and had to go to bed . He seems to feel an irresistible curiosity about us and our habits and indulges it unabashedly . We give him cups of in- stant bouillon or hot chocolate which Gary brings from Cusco ...
... finally succeeding in understanding how to and then fixing the broken threads myself , which in the end took a couple of hours , I wove the next day , the day of San Juan , until I finally felt foolish working so diligently when ...
... finally , Peru for the States . At last , we turned back : it was getting late , the sun west of us , and it would take us hours to get home even if we didn't stop at all . Going back through Toqtohuaylla , though , we were hailed from ...