'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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... kitchen was a second two- story building , with one small window high in the wall . Another room had been added to this building , just outside the kitchen door - Gary had helped to dig the foundation for it when he was here last year ...
... kitchen , cooking for the men who would plant her field , in- stead of alone in our house while Gary worked . She gave us breakfast early in the morning - two bowls of soup each and mot'e ; mot'e is dried corn which is broken off the ...
... kitchen now and then to serve the women , who all tried to refuse the copita and ended up drinking it with a grimace . In the early afternoon , Hugo came into the yard and dropped his red poncho near the door of the kitchen . Through ...