'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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... later , and Teresa invited her in and gave her a bowl of soup and they talked . Teresa explained to me that her mother was also making chicha for a cargo ; she stayed only long enough to eat her soup . Then there was a very shy little ...
... later did enthusiastically . Teresa served mot'e and plates full of hot ground tarwi garnished with carrots and onions and the little fishes , which are eaten whole , heads and tails and all , and taste briny and sharp because of the ...
... later and later , and still we hadn't exhausted the supply of chicha . I danced mostly with Teresa and Celestina but a couple of times with don Andrés : he is a real gentleman and , dancing , has a sense of his partner and of style ...