'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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... thought , a measure of social success ) and had been impressed by the respect and importance the people of ' Tambo attribute to education - to learn ; about how nobody in the United States knows what life is like in Peru , the life of ...
... thought she might refuse to enter . Gary proceeded as casually as he could , and I gave her a little push and followed her in . It was lunchtime , and the place was crowded with Cusqueños , and we feared , again , that she might bolt or ...
... thought , Yes , and you aren't a com- pulsive perfectionist who is doing it for the first time , and that he prob- ably would have had the sense not to have undertaken the project in the midst of all the activity of preparation for and ...