This dissertation shows how the particularities of Tibetan relationships to places shape their transition from rural to urban livelihoods in the late-socialist reform period in the People's Republic of China. Utilizing Tibetan historical sources from the 12th to 20th centuries and ethnographic research in Beijing, Chengdu, and pastoralist communities in eastern Tibet, it argues that educated cohorts of Tibetans are able to draw on historical and social meanings of Tibetan places that, while structured by state administrative units, specifically refer back to the centrality of Tibetan social and moral worlds. In China's late-socialist period, economic reforms aim to integrate Tibetan rural livelihoods into a national economic landscape where they are structurally disadvantaged and socially and geographically marginalized. Historical narratives of place enable Tibetans to reconnect with the legacy of Tibet's prominent role on the Asian continent and to highlight a sense of continuous and shared history among members of Tibetan communities. The reaffirmation of relational ties---a sense of belonging based on reciprocal social relations between people as well as between people and the land---within Tibetan communities in the last decade comes at a time when intensified urban-centered development is experienced by Tibetans as thwarted socioeconomic mobility as well as cultural loss. This strengthening of Tibetan social ties also comes at a time when Tibetans are rejecting the civilizing discourse of the state that places them at the social, economic, cultural, and moral margins. In its place, educated cohorts of Tibetans are highlighting their reciprocal relationships to each other to build a broader community of Tibetan members, linked through a historical geo-body of Tibet that re-centers themselves in relation to each other instead of at the margins of the nation-state. In the epilogue, recent projects of entrepreneurship show how Tibetan members are building an alternative vision of economic well-being that repositions Tibetans as the moral vanguard within the national economic body. By re-centering Tibet, Tibetans can reclaim their position as valuable contributors to the nation-state, as well as to the world.