'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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... woman with her had both been spinning when they came into the yard - in fact , every woman we had seen in ' Tambo had been spinning - so Gary announced to them that I wanted to learn how to spin . This , as I had feared it would , made ...
... woman sitting by the field , and the men were nearly finished with their work . Four men : Gary and old don Andrés and two young men , Lorenzo and Fortunato , who is Pascuala's nephew . Lorenzo drove the team of bulls - a striking team ...
... woman came to the house while these ingredients were being assembled , an old woman with graying hair , wearing a handwoven cloth about her shoulders , as old women do , instead of a shawl bought in the market . She and Teresa talked ...