'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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... hands , twisted the narrow rope be- tween the almost - two balls and pressed them together , flattening the bread with the heels of our hands . With the last of the dough , Daniel shaped wawitas and caballitos ( babies and little horses ) ...
... hands , and usually eaten with the hands . We drank the rest of the day , all of the men contributing bottle after bottle of trago ; Felipe's wife ( whose name is among those I never learned ) doesn't make chicha there at the chosita ...
... hands in a line , the women followed them up Calle San Juan and across the plaza , where some men sat on benches of planks supported by adobes in front of the shops and drank with the village officials , and up the street at the end of ...