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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... Spanish churches on two sides, and sit on a bench in the sun to read; and now I write at a table in an empty cafe where the music is sometimes classical, sometimes Spanish criolla, and they have an Italian espresso machine and very good ...
... Spanish churches. And one day I was standing on a corner when a man drove a herd of llamas out of a steep side street into Calle Sapphi and across it; the llamas had burdens tied on their backs and held their heads high, bright pink and ...
... Spanish generic term which encompasses, at least in its folk definition, the same vague set of indistinct respiratory ailments of varying severity which we call a cold), which we attributed to exhaustion and change of climate. And we ...
... Spanish-style adobe oven, shaped like a beehive) encircled by the beginnings of the foundation of a shelter apparently to be built around it. After a while, a man came with a bundle, went into the comedor, and then came out and stayed ...
... Spanish that it was so I could remember them. I am fairly comfortable in Spanish with the Quechua people, mostly men, who speak it: it is a second language for both of us. A little while later she named the parts of the loom for me, and ...