Croll, Elisabeth 1944-2007 (Elisabeth J. Croll, Elisabeth Joan Croll, Elizabeth J. Croll, Joan Elisabeth Croll, Lisa Croll, Elisabeth Joan Sprackett)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born September 21, 1944, in Reefton, South Island, New Zealand; died of cancer, October 3, 2007. Anthropologist, sinologist, educator, administrator, consultant, and author. Croll was one of few westerners allowed to explore the rural communities at the heart of Communist China in the years after the political leadership of Mao Zedong. She avoided tourist accommodations in favor of sharing crowded, primitive living spaces with peasant families in the countryside, and there she learned firsthand what life was like for women in modern China. What she learned and later wrote about was that, despite government decrees and public statements to the contrary, change came slowly in the countryside, especially for women. Croll conducted several brief missions in China to make observations and gather facts; she related her discoveries in classes that she taught at the London School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, where she spent many years as a professor of Chinese anthropology and later served as a vice principal of the school itself. Croll also served as a member of England's China Task Force, an executive member of the Great Britain-China Centre, as chair of the United Nations Council in Tokyo, and as a consultant to many organizations around the world, including the World Bank and the Ford Foundation. Croll wrote more than a dozen books over a period of thirty years—years that bore witness to much change in Chinese society, as well as much reluctance to abandon centuries of tradition. One of these books, Wise Daughters from Foreign Lands: European Women Writers in China (1989), celebrates the work of other women like herself—Pearl S. Buck, for example—who actually left the European enclaves to live among the Chinese people. Her other writings include Feminism and Socialism in China (1978), The Family Rice Bowl: Food and the Domestic Economy in China (1983), Endangered Daughters: Discrimination and Development in Asia (2000), and China's New Consumers: Social Development and Domestic Demand (2006). Shortly before her death Croll was decorated a companion of the prestigious Order of St. Michael and St. George in honor of her academic contributions to her country and the world; the award was presented posthumously to a member of her family.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), October 16, 2007, p. 54.