Elizabeth Croll is Professor Chinese Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. For more than twenty-five years she as conducted field studies in China and is a world authority on social development and gender issues in historical and contemporary China.

Much has been written of China's peasant revolution, less has been written on the peasant experience of reform. In From Heaven to Earth Elisabeth Croll examines the images, policies and experiences of development and links the peasants' experience of revolution and reform with their conceptualisations of time and change and examines the new and recent desires which motivate peasant households in China; the new and strenuous demands which are generated by current reforms which allocate new responsibilities to the peasant family; and family strategies evolved by peasant housholds to maximise their resources within the context of reformed rural development. From Heaven to Earth will be of great interest to students, lecturers and professionals in development studies, anthropology, sociology and Chinese Studies.