'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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... waited with them for a while as the bread baked , until it started to hail . Not wanting to abandon them when they had specifically asked me to help , I waited a while longer until I was convinced , perhaps mostly by misery , that I was ...
... waited while they ate and then while they 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 ...
... waited in the street across from the gates of the brewery grounds , clean and meticulously kept , until almost nine . Then the ingeniero , Raúl , arrived and Baltazar talked with him outside the gate ; he waved at Gary and me from ...