In his study of Tibetan place-making in Xining, Andrew Grant contributes a much-needed study of Tibetan participation in state-led urbanization at the scale of a metropolis. Previous book-length works on aspects of urbanization in Tibet include Emily Yeh's study of landscape and subjectivity transformation centered in Lhasa and Charlene Makley's research on Tibetan engagements with state development in a county-level site in eastern Tibet.1 Grant's work also joins a number of recent articles that examine particular aspects of urbanization in eastern Tibet.2 Grant's account is based on seventeen months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2013 and 2017 in the city of Xining, a tier 3 city in China, the provincial capital of Qinghai, and the largest city on the Tibetan Plateau. He draws on interviews with urban Tibetan residents, observations of the urban landscape, and analyses of state policy and campaign texts promoting urban expansion and civil citizenry.
The...
