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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... field 115 12. Carnaval 121 13. Punayapuy 135 14. Teresa comes to Cusco 143 15. Easter 149 16. Harvesting early potatoes 154 17. Cruz Velakuy 166 1 8. Potato and barley harvests 173 19. Corn harvest 180 20. Weaving 184 zi. San Juan ...
... field in 1987 and 1988, and for his reading and comments on the manuscript, and both of them for their support of my own endeavors in the field as well as Gary's. Finally, this book would never have come into existence without the ...
... fields above the level of the village, and potatoes in the high puna (about 13,500 feet), two or three hours' walk ... fields are hoed and weeded, and the earth of fallowed fields is turned in preparation for the coming year's crops. In ...
... fields, plowing or planting or weeding the crops, learning to use the traditional tools, the short, crook-handled hoes and the footplow, and his own back and legs and arms in unfamiliar ways. And he learned all of the other myriad tasks ...
... fields on the mountainsides with simple wooden plows, the more I understand the grandeur and majesty that must have been Cusco when it was the Inca's city. It is wonderful to turn a corner and find yourself in a narrow street walled ...