'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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... told me , finally called the man a liar and told Gary to go home and not to worry about it anymore . Don Carlos , the governor , had seemed skeptical about the validity of the accusation all along — I had even thought I had heard an ...
... told that the ceremony of christening is performed only on the first Sunday of each month : this was the third . We waited at the truck stop until six - thirty , after dark , and still the truck had not ar- rived , so we went home . We ...
... told us a story his grandfather had told him about ukukus , the Andean spectacled bears , represented in the tradi- tional dances by the men in their heavily fringed tunics of black or dark brown and strange knitted masks , about the ...