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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 75
... afternoon teaching me how to spin. I would also like to mention with gratitude two special friends of ours, Richard Bielefeldt and Jean-Jacques Decoster — Richard for many hours of inspired and inspiring conversation in Cusco in 1981 ...
... afternoon light changing the shape of the near mountains around the city, in every view of them the bell towers of some church, Belen or the cathedral or San Cristobal. We have been out into the campo (the country) twice now, once to ...
... 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 to Cusco and those who read the best-selling guide books — we ...
... in Lima and probably knew too much of the world to be happy in the highlands even if he had not been happy in Lima. He had also, obviously, already been drinking. In the early afternoon, Daniel, a son of Baltazar and THE BEGINNING 9.
... afternoon, we decided to take a walk, mainly to escape the trago: the drinking clearly could, and would, have gone on to a point at which we would all have been sorry. Daniel first showed us to the second story, the marks, of his ...