'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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... served them , to the men who help another man in his fields - a gesture mirrored by the man's wife , who serves chicha to the women who help her cook for the men . Because all agricultural tasks are performed using footplows and hand ...
... served , Teresa first . Baltazar took his place at the top of the horseshoe . Teresa served the meal in a manner which I imagined to be more like the way meals must have been served in the field before the advent of in- expensive and ...
... served chicha and the men served the trago . The other mayordomo and his guests arrived , the men joining Andrés ' male guests , the women joining us , and the two groups served each other chicha and trago for a couple of hours be- fore ...