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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... festivals that fall during those months. And so, Gary spent most of his days during that year working with the men of ... festival celebrations or participating in those celebrations. I worked with the women of the family, doing women's ...
... festival of Natividad, 'Tambo's major festival of the year, was to begin on Tuesday, the eighth, and many people were going to visit or were returning to 'Tambo from Cusco with supplies for the celebration. We struggled onto the truck ...
... festival. Juana's shop was open — a windowless cubicle in large part filled by a table which served as a counter and with shelves along the back wall and the side wall by the door and a bench along the front wall just inside. The truck ...
... festival. The Quechua year is calibrated by the dates of these festivals of Catholic saints, dates of the Spanish calendar. Each village celebrates certain different saints' days and other signal dates in the religious calendar such as ...
Life in an Andean Village Julia Meyerson. so the travail of fulfillment of festival cargos is, usually, sought after, though not without some careful consideration. It was these people, the carguyuqs, who came that day to have Baltazar ...