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 fencing of pastures, and settlement projects, under the guidance of a state that profoundly mistrusts the nomadic lifestyle. Tan thus provides valuable insight into a threatened way of life. She presents a particularly vivid and engaging account of the trials and tribulations of fieldwork, which should be interesting to anyone embarking on a similar project.

It is not, on the other hand, easy to see who the intended audience is. The book does not appear to be written as a scholarly work, even though there are scattered references to academic literature and a short bibliography. Tan's account does not engage in any academic debates, nor does it even have a clear argument. It reads more like a personal account of fieldwork. Yet at the same time, it does not seem intended for a general audience, in contrast to the style of Kate Karko's excellent Namma.Footnote ¹ Many complex cultural phenomena, like the Tibetan system of reincarnation (p. 86), “folk religion” (p. 18), the calendrical system (p. 51), and the practices of treasure revealers (pp. 53, 57) are not explained, nor does Tan spell out what she means by academic concepts like “a position of reciprocity” (p. 56). She provides little history and background on the area and its relations with the broader Tibetan world, or the effects of Chinese governmental control and the Cultural Revolution. Even a nonspecialist audience would appreciate a narrative or argument, and it is disappointing that Tan has not had the confidence to include the reflections that she must have made during her work, as well as those that must have emerged when she engaged with more scholarly literature. This is a shame, because the ethnographic material is rich, and it is to be hoped that she makes more of its possibilities in her later work.