Tambo: Life in an Andean Village

Front Cover
University of Texas Press, Mar 1, 1990 - Social Science - 297 pages

Perhaps 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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Contents

I
xix
II
12
III
27
IV
39
V
57
VI
62
VII
68
VIII
77
XV
147
XVI
152
XVII
164
XVIII
171
XIX
178
XX
182
XXI
187
XXII
195

IX
86
X
103
XI
113
XII
119
XIII
133
XIV
142
XXIII
202
XXIV
210
XXV
219
XXVI
229
XXVII
234
Copyright

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Page xiii - Life in a Quechua village is simple and hard, based on subsistence agriculture, so that the activities of every member of each family are determined throughout the year and indeed, for most, throughout their lives by the needs of the crops.
Page xiv - to the dry-season activities of weaving and building and repairing the damage done by the rains and to the wholehearted celebration of the numerous
Page xiv - cut and allowed to dry for threshing; the corn is harvested in June. After the
Page xii - the kind of houses they live in, the kind of food they eat.
Page xiii - Andean winter, a succession of warm cloudless days and stunningly clear and frigid
Page xiii - During these months, the fields are hoed and weeded, and the earth of

About the author (1990)

Julia Meyerson is an artist who lives in Earlville, New York.

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