'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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... called Belempampa , where the trucks which go to ' Tambo and Paruro and other villages in that direction leave from . There are " truck stops " like this one in almost every one of the outlying neighborhoods of Cusco , where trucks ...
... called sankhu , a food which Baltazar describes as a food of the Incas : toasted wheat ground with some corn into a ... called chimallaku ; large hail is called chikchi . Hail at this time of the season is a threat to the young crops ...
... called the alcaldín , wore a man's pointed montera and a poncho tied closely around his shoulders and chest and carried a vara ( a ceremonial staff of wood bound in silver ) and a waraka , a woven sling . Teodoro was dressed as a woman ...