First published in 1978, Feminism and Socialism in China explores the inter-relationship of feminism and socialism and the contribution of each towards the redefinition of the role and status of women in China. In her history of the women's movement in China from the late nineteenth century onwards, Professor Croll provides an opportunity to study its construction, its ideological and structural development over a number of decades, and its often ambiguous relationship with a parallel movement to establish socialism. Based on a variety of material including eye witness accounts, the author examines a wide range of fundamental issues, including women's class and oppression, the relation of women's solidarity groups to class organisations, reproduction and the accommodation of domestic labour, women in the labour process, and the relationship between women's participation in social production and their access to and control of political and economic resources. The book includes excerpts from studies of village and communal life, documents of the women's movement and interviews with members of the movement.

The relationships between humans and their natural surroundings is paradoxical. They impose knowledge and action on the world around them, yet at the same time subscribe to myths and beliefs which portray them and their natural suroundings as inseparable, with neither more powerful than the other. This paradox is explored in the essays in Bush Base: Forest Farm, which uses an anthropological perpective to direct new light on development and environmental studies. The contributors, all anthropologists who have had practical experience of development programmes, present case studies drawn form Africa and Asia, and reflect upon their theoretical implications. They reject the traditional sharp dichotomies of human settelemnt and external natural environment - farm of camp on the one hand, and forest or bush on the other - and suggest instead that the people, their indigenous knowledge and their forests or bush exist within each other. They argue that although the concept of sustainable development takes greater cognisance of the environment there is still a need to place at their centre and appreciation of people's cosmologies and cultural understandings.

First published in 1978, Feminism and Socialism in China explores the inter-relationship of feminism and socialism and the contribution of each towards the redefinition of the role and status of women in China. In her history of the women's movement in China from the late nineteenth century onwards, Professor Croll provides an opportunity to study its construction, its ideological and structural development over a number of decades, and its often ambiguous relationship with a parallel movement to establish socialism. Based on a variety of material including eye witness accounts, the author examines a wide range of fundamental issues, including women's class and oppression, the relation of women's solidarity groups to class organisations, reproduction and the accommodation of domestic labour, women in the labour process, and the relationship between women's participation in social production and their access to and control of political and economic resources. The book includes excerpts from studies of village and communal life, documents of the women's movement and interviews with members of the movement.

The mesmerizing potential of 1.3 billion customers has long constituted 'a magic market' for foreign entrepreneurs who once again are queuing to take advantage of China's fast-growing economy and rapidly changing society. Now, to counter a growing reliance on the markets of the world for exports, China's government too has turned to developing its own domestic markets by placing the expansion of domestic demand high on the nation's agenda. This book explores China's consumer revolution over the past three decades and shows a continuing cycle leading to excess supply and disappointing demand at the center of which lies exaggerated expectations of China's new consumers.
Elisabeth Croll details the livelihoods and lifestyles of China's new and evolving social categories who, divided by wealth, location and generation, have both benefited from and been disadvantaged by the past two decades of reform and rapid economic growth. Given that consumption is about so much more than shopping and spending, this bookfocuses on the perceptions, priorities and concerns of China's new consumers which are an essential part of any contemporary narrative about China's domestic market. Documenting the social consequences of several decades of rapid economic growth and the new interest in 'all-round' social development, "China's New Consumers "will be of value to students, entrepreneurs and a wide variety of readers who are interested in social trends and concerns in China today.

The mesmerizing potential of 1.3 billion customers has long constituted 'a magic market' for foreign entrepreneurs who once again are queuing to take advantage of China's fast-growing economy and rapidly changing society. Now, to counter a growing reliance on the markets of the world for exports, China's government too has turned to developing its own domestic markets by placing the expansion of domestic demand high on the nation's agenda. This book explores China's consumer revolution over the past three decades and shows a continuing cycle leading to excess supply and disappointing demand at the center of which lies exaggerated expectations of China's new consumers.
Elisabeth Croll details the livelihoods and lifestyles of China's new and evolving social categories who, divided by wealth, location and generation, have both benefited from and been disadvantaged by the past two decades of reform and rapid economic growth. Given that consumption is about so much more than shopping and spending, this bookfocuses on the perceptions, priorities and concerns of China's new consumers which are an essential part of any contemporary narrative about China's domestic market. Documenting the social consequences of several decades of rapid economic growth and the new interest in 'all-round' social development, "China's New Consumers "will be of value to students, entrepreneurs and a wide variety of readers who are interested in social trends and concerns in China today.

This unique and groundbreaking book seeks to re-focus gender debate onto the issue of daughter discrimination - a phenomenon still hidden and unacknowledged across the world.
It asks the controversial question of why millions of girls do not appear to be surviving to adulthood in contemporary Asia. In the first major study available of this emotive and sensitive issue, Elisabeth Croll investigates the extent of discrimination against female children in Asia and shifts the focus of attention firmly from son-preference to daughter-discrimination.
This book brings together demographic data and anthropological field studies to reveal the multiple ways in which girls are disadvantaged, from excessive child mortality to the withholding of health care and education on the basis of gender. Focusing especially on China and India, the book reveals the surprising coincidence of increasing daughter discrimination with rising economic development, declining fertility and the generally improved status of women in East and South Asia. Essential reading for all those interested in gender in contemporary society.
Case studies include:
* China
* Republic of Korea
* Taiwan
* Vietnam
* India
* Pakistan
* Bangladesh

The increasing number of 'missing girls' in much of South and East Asia provides the disturbing focus this key title. It is unique in it's positive attention to daughter discrimination in these regions, as opposed to the large body of existing literature which analyses preference for sons.
The complete story of these 'missing' daughters is assembled here for the first time from a range of material, most of it published elsewhere, assigning the book both originality and lasting value.
Endangered Daughters draws from two main channels of research:
a) demographic data looking at
* sex ratio's at birth
* excessive female infant and child mortality
* other forms of girlhood disadvantage
b) anthropological field studies articulating
* gendered values attached to children
* ideal family size
* ideal family composition
* gender roles within families Case studies include:
* China
* Republic of Korea
* Taiwan
* Vietnam
* India
* Pakistan
* Bangladesh.

Much has been written on China's peasant revolution, less has been written of the peasant experience of reform. Since 1979, when the first major reforms were introduced into China's villages, there have been many shifts and changes in the translation and practice of reform policies. Consequently, many of the initial assumptions and judgements made by observers, analysts and participants have been modified over the years. It is not so much that the implications of the reforms for lives, practices and policies have become clearer, as that they have become increasingly paradoxical and various. Elisabeth Croll examines the images, policies and experiences of development, and links the peasants' experience of revolution and reform with their conceptualizations of time and change. She combines a study of the dreams of development as sets of rhetorical lens - through which peasant populations perceive collective family and individual experiences - with an analysis of rural development policies and reforms at the centre of which lies the peasant household. She also examines the new and recent desires which motivate peasant households in China.

Elizabeth Croll's "From Heaven to Earth" examines the images, policies and experiences of development in China, and more specifically shows how the peasant experience of revolution and reform has been greatly affected by their conceptualizations of time and change. Beginning with the first major reforms introduced into China's villages in 1979, numerous changes have been made in the translation and practice of reform policies. These reforms have in fact become so paradoxical and various, that analysts have had to modify their initial judgments of these complex changes over the years.
Croll takes a unique analytical approach to the subject of rural development policy in China by examining this issue in the context of peasant dreams of development--dreams which prove central to how this population views their family and individual experience. Croll also examines the desires which motivate peasant households in China; the strenuous demands that current reforms have forced upon peasant families; and the ways in which peasant households maximize their resources in the face of reform and rural development.
In its examination of the peasant family and household, the peasant individual and their relationship with the state, "From Heaven to Earth" shows how the translation and implementation of national policy is greatly dependent upon local knowledge and power.

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415066565

In the People's Republic of China the redefinition of the procedures and symbols of marriage formed one of the main means by which the State has attempted to create major changes in the relations between the sexes, the generations and between domestic and kin groups. In this detailed anthropological study, first published in 1981, Dr Elisabeth Croll examines the changes which have taken place with the institution of marriage between the early 1950s and the late 1970s. She observes the changes in the criteria governing choice of spouse, negotiation procedures, the age of marriage and its ritual and ceremonial forms. This book is based on both documentary sources and research visits to the People's Republic. As an anthropological approach to marriage it raises broader conceptual questions on the relations of marriage to kinship structures, and the interaction of economy and ideology in processes of social change.