In the Circle of White Stones: Moving through the Seasons with Nomads of Eastern Tibet

This charming book chronicles daily life among nomadic pastoralists in eastern Tibet, in China's Sichuan Province. Gillian Tan spent several years working in the area with a development organization before turning to ethnographic research. In the Circle of White Stones charts her first year living with a Tibetan pastoralist family, in 2006, along with subsequent visits up to 2013, over the course of which she watched the initiation of a major school project in the area by a Tibetan Buddhist lama. Tan describes pastoralist life from the perspective of the women who inhabit one of the Tibetans’ tents, with whom she built up close relations. She describes their daily chores, the vicissitudes of moving between pastures and tending to the livestock, and the pattern of family relations. Although she only hints at these processes, this traditional lifestyle is threatened by galloping development, the construction of new towns and roads, the...