'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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... night , after a day in the puna . Balt and Gary were working for someone else , so we had spent a peaceful af- ternoon watching the chicks in the yard and spinning and late in the after- noon had begun to make a pot of soup to feed ...
... night , after dark , Sebastiana came down to spend the night with Hugo who has been ill . Teresa and Leonarda burst into our room , agi- tated , demanding that we come out with our flashlight : Sebastiana had seen an alma ( a soul ) in ...
... night occurred when I sat on poor , dear Andrés : his head lay in the darkness of the corner and I mistook the length of his stretched - out form for a blanket - covered bench or log and , when I was waved to that end of the room to sit ...