Book excerpt: Based on long-term fieldwork in a rural Tibetan region in China's northwest (2002-13), 'The Battle for Fortune' is an ethnography of state-local relations among Tibetans marginalized underChina's Great Develop the West campaign and during the 2008 military crackdown on Tibetan unrest. The study brings anthropological approaches to states and development into dialogue with recent interdisciplinary debates about the very nature of human subjectivity and relations with nonhuman others (including deities).