'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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 59
... never really introduced , learning a few of their names only through their conversations with those who knew them and called them or toasted them by name ; we never learned whether they were siblings or more dis- tant relatives or ...
... never gotten to ' Tambo . Nevertheless , we were greeted on the plaza , shyly , by Teresa and then quite proudly by ... never tasted before , though he considers himself very worldly and would never have admitted it . We neglected to ...
... never eaten , they would never be eaten , but aban- doned the explanation in the face of Baltazar's expression , one of the dis- interest of total incomprehension . But Sandorcha nevertheless was the closest I've seen to a pet in Peru ...