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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... watched over by tall crosses planted on hilltops to guard them against the hail and frosts of the transitional seasons. Summer, the growing season, is the rainy season, when clouds hang close about the mountaintops, one seldom sees the ...
... watched and spun and watched. The dye dealer had said she was a good weaver: she was quick and deft, and the patterns were not simple ones — at least they didn't look simple to me. Once she stopped and pointed to one band of pattern and ...
... watched for a while, Gary standing with the group of men with whom Baltazar was working, I sitting at the edge of the plaza with other women and girls. The trucks that arrived from Cusco in midmorning bore essentials for the festival ...
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