This narrative of subsistence on the Tibetan plateau describes the life-worlds of people in a region traditionally known as Kham who move with their yaks from pasture to pasture, depending on the milk production of their herd for sustenance.

Foreword / Stevan Harrell

Preface

Acknowledgments

Transcription, Transliteration, and Names

The People

Timeline

1. Getting to Dora Karmo

2. The House and the Tent

3. Life in the Summer Pasture

4. A World of Impermanence

5. The Lama

6. Leaving and Arriving

Glossary

Suggested Reading

Index

"Gillian Tan’s beautifully written, collaborative ethnography offers us a succession of luminous insights into the lives and livelihoods of nomadic Tibetan pastoralists. Favoring intimate narrative accounts of quotidian existence over sweeping generalizations about the economic, religious, and political forces at play in Dora Karmo, Tan succeeds brilliantly in capturing the subtle interplay of continuity and discontinuity in a lifeworld that has always been, in one way or another, on the move."

Gillian Tan's beautifully written, collaborative ethnography offers us a succession of luminous insights into the lives and livelihoods of nomadic Tibetan pastoralists. Favoring intimate narrative accounts of quotidian existence over sweeping generalizations about the economic, religious, and political forces at play in Dora Karmo, Tan succeeds brilliantly in capturing the subtle interplay of continuity and discontinuity in a lifeworld that has always been, in one way or another, on the move. -- Michael D. Jackson, author of As Wide as the World Is Wide: Reinventing Philosophical Anthropology Presents a glimpse into contemporary Tibetan nomad life that moves with a sense of pace and grace that is similar to how one must walk at altitude. The book captures lived experiences of Tibetans at a moment of momentous social, ecological, and economic change. -- Sienna Craig, author of Horses Like Lightning: A Story of Passage through the Himalayas I thoroughly enjoyed reading In the Circle of White Stones. I especially appreciate the portrayals of both (Tan's) interactions with her interlocutors and the changing conditions of life in the pastoral Eastern Tibetan plateau. -- Emily Yeh, author of Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development