'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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... returned only after dark , having spent that day drinking too , at the house just above theirs , with the family of a friend of Hugo's who had just returned from Puerto Maldonado . Late that night , long after we had closed the door ...
... returned from the field on Monday and I returned on Tuesday , the celebration had already pro- gressed too far , everyone too drunk - including eighty - year - old don Andrés - to drink or dance more ; it wasn't certainly the drinking I ...
... returned to the center of the intersection : now the alcaldín of each pair held the banner and the " woman " the sling . With the sling , she beat the backs of the man's legs as they circled each other warily : these blows too drew ...