'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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... stood , decorated with flowers , now brown and withered , and a long , fringed sash . When we looked back we saw a group of children as we had suspected , but the two who were working their way down toward us from the crest were boys ...
... stood by the wall of the shops in the sun chatting for a while . Then he went over to help the group of men building the one altar that was erected — though two ayllus had cargos , only one for some reason built an altar - and who were ...
... stood by the wall of the shops drinking - chicha , another bottle of trago - lost in the daze of the early morning alcohol , the complexity of our emotions , and the festival activity in the plaza , full of vendors and visitors . We stood ...