'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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... finished they began again to serve chicha , first to us , the women , in thanks , and Teresa filled their bottle with trago from the jug we had brought and they served this as well , giving each woman two copitas before serving ...
... finished Baltazar's field and hoed a small one of Ricardo's nearby . Hallmay is done with lampas ( the crooked hoes with broad spade - like blades ) ; the earth in the furrows between the rows of potato plants is broken up , then lifted ...
... finished it in one day . I had heard him boast like this before : it had taken Celestina eight days to complete the costal she had woven and had taken Baltazar only two or three to finish each of the two he had made . And he is an able ...