John Lossing Buck | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1890-11-27)November 27, 1890[1] |
| Died | September 27, 1975(1975-09-27) (aged 84)[1] |
| Years active | 1915 – 1957[1] |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 4[1] |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Cornell University (BS 1914, MS 1925, PhD 1933)[1] |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Agricultural economics[1] |
| Institutions |
|
John Lossing Buck (November 27, 1890 – September 27, 1975,[1][2] adopted the Chinese name卜凱) was an American agricultural economist[3] specializing in therural economy of China. He first went to China in 1915 as an agricultural missionary for theAmerican Presbyterian Mission and was based in China until 1944. His wife, whom he later divorced, wasNobel Prize-winning authorPearl S. Buck.
Buck was born inDutchess County, New York. He graduated fromCornell University in 1914, and returned for an M.S. in 1925, and a PhD in 1933.[1]
In 1917, Buck married Pearl Sydenstricker, who subsequently became famous under her married namePearl S. Buck. In 1920 they had a child, Carol Grace, and in 1925 adopted Janice. In 1918, Lossing, as he was known to his friends, and Pearl went to live inZhenjiang, where Lossing began his research into the Chinese farm economy using sociological tools based on statistical surveys conducted in person. Pearl, who had grown up in China, accompanied him on his initial trips through the countryside to interpret and translate. In 1920,University of Nanking, a university sponsored by American churches, invited Lossing to create and head a Department of Agricultural Economics (the department later merged into the College of Economics and Management,Nanjing Agricultural University).[4] Over the next twelve years he organized his students to conduct a survey of 16,786 farms and 38,256 farm families, which he analyzed inChinese Farm Economy (University of Chicago Press, 1930), the first footnote of which cited his wife's novelThe Good Earth. Buck continued the surveys, further producing a three volume study,Land Utilization in China (University of Chicago Press, 1937), one of the earliest and most extensive analyses of China's rural economy in the Republican period.[5]
In 1932,The Good Earth won aPulitzer Prize. On June 11, 1935, Pearl Buck divorced him inReno,Nevada.[6] In 1941, he married Lomay Chang (1908 – 2012)[7] in Chengdu, China. They had two children, Rosalind, born in China, and Paul, born in the United States.[8]
In the following years Buck served in a series of significant posts, includingU.S. Treasury Representative in China, Chief of the Land and Water Use Branch of FAO (United Nations) and Director for Agricultural Economics at theCouncil on Economic and Cultural Affairs. After retiring in 1957, he continued giving lectures and writing, and served as a consultant for the U.S. State Department'sBureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Among his published works from this period includedFood and Agriculture in Communist China (Praeger, 1966) which he prepared for theHoover Institution and co-authored with Owen L. Dawson and Yuan-Li Wu.[8]
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China economists disagree on the value of Buck's surveys of the 1920s and 1930s. Some, especially those writing from aMarxist perspective,[who?] felt that Buck was too optimistic in finding that technological backwardness, not inequality of land distribution, was the main problem. They charged that Buck's students reported on their own families and villages, which naturally were more prosperous than average. Others, while conceding that Buck did not perform class analysis, questioned whether it was appropriate to read outside categories into the surveys. In any case, there is general agreement that Buck's surveys are still the most extensive ones available.[9]
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