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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... Gary Urton, and me to live there and, among those people, especially Baltazar Quispe and Teresa Sullca, in whose house we lived and who stood by us in the difficult times and have become very dear friends: the story told in this book ...
... Gary's. Finally, this book would never have come into existence without the inspiration, gentle advice, and loving support of my friend Elizabeth Tallent, for whom, along with my husband, Gary, I really wrote my journal when we were in ...
... Gary, an anthropologist, had spent a month in Peru, in this village, gleaning material on which to base a proposal to do fieldwork there. Armed with the notes he had taken in a slender, hardbound fieldbook, he wrote the proposal and ...
... Gary got one from New York last week in three days. The first ones we got here took about ten days, and mail has been known to take three to six weeks. Sometimes packages get through, sometimes even a thick envelope won't make it. Our ...
... Gary's old place on Calle Sapphi, and we slept for hours. In the afternoon, we could hear the explosions of fireworks, and when we went out — to the Cafe Ayllu for coffee and the pastries for which it is famous among frequent travelers ...