'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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... things I miss about home are much less habits and things and places than simply people . But Cusco is such a beautiful city - sometimes I look up and am still sur- prised to see the mountains : snow - capped Ausangate far off beyond the ...
... things is not so important to these people ; or maybe they only treat us this way , so foreign that the rules do not apply to us . But it is profoundly disorienting . After Baltazar had gone , Hugo and Daniel and Jaime came to collect ...
... things they wanted us to bring for them from Cusco , Baltazar offered us new plans for today , Saturday , his trip ... things we wanted to accomplish - all of the corre- spondence , getting our clothes washed , restocking our supplies ...