'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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... earth . Then the men , as a team , bend , drawing the handles of the chakitaqllas down toward the earth , the leverage which pries the sod from its foundation . A man called the rapachu ( from the word rapay , which means to turn over ...
... earth is combed with hands and hoe to discover all of the tubers ; children walk over the har- vested section of the field , scuffing in the turned earth with their feet to find the potatoes inevitably left behind and delighting in ...
... earth , forming a dome in which Teresa built a hot fire . She shoved potatoes into the oven through the opening left in the side , and then pushed in part of the roof of the dome to pour in an armful of beans , still in their pods . She ...