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H-ASIA December 29, 2010 Obituary for Marjorie Topley ************************************************************************ From: Jean DeBernardi <jean.debernardi@ualberta.ca> Dr. Marjorie Topley (b. 1927) passed away on December 16, 2010, at her home in Battle, East Sussex, England. Topley had the distinction of being the first undergraduate student to study anthropology at the London School of Economics. She met her husband, Kenneth Wallis Joseph Topley, at the LSE, where he was studying government. He joined the colonial service, and in 1951 they went to Singapore after studying Chinese in London. In Singapore, Marjorie took a post as curator of anthropology at the Raffles Museum. Because the Malayan Emergency made travel in the Malay Peninsula unsafe, she undertook research on Cantonese immigrant women's vegetarian halls and Chinese popular religion in Singapore. This research formed the basis of her 1958 doctoral thesis (entitled The Organisation and Social Function of Chinese Women's Chai T'ang in Singapore), which she completed as an external student with informal supervision from Maurice Freedman. Regrettably, the thesis was never published as a book. In 1955, the Topleys moved to Hong Kong, where Kenneth Topley continued his career in colonial administration, including serving as Director of Education. Although she did not take up a fulltime teaching position, Marjorie maintained an active program of anthropological research, participating in invited international conferences and publishing her work in major scholarly journals and edited volumes. She also played a major role in the revival of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, serving as the group's Vice-President from 1966 to 1972, and as its President from 1972 until her return to England in 1983. With support from the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong University Press and NUS Press have collaborated to publish a complete collection of her papers, _Cantonese Society in Hong Kong and Singapore: Gender, Religion, Medicine and Money: Essays by Marjorie Topley_, edited and introduced by Jean DeBernardi. The book is forthcoming in January 2011 (ISBN 978-988-8028-14-6). Jean DeBernardi jean.debernardi@ualberta.ca http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~jdeberna Anthropology Department The University of Alberta ************************************************************************* To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to: <H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu> For holidays or short absences send post to: <listserv@h-net.msu.edu> with message: SET H-ASIA NOMAIL Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
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