Solon Lovett Barraclough

Background

Barraclough was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, United States on August 17, 1922. He was brought up in a family-farm environment in New Hampshire, United States where he acquired knowledge of practical farming on his parents' New Hampshire farm.

Education

Solon Barraclough was a graduate of the University of New Hampshire, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Physics in 1944, and Harvard University, where he studied under Joseph Schumpeter, JK Galbraith, and Wassily Leontief and received his Master of Arts in 1949 and a Doctor of Philosophy in Economics in 1950. For his doctorate, he studied under John D. Black and John Kenneth Galbraith.

Largely because of World War II, during which he did military service in the Pacific theater in the Philippines and later in occupied Japan (1945-1946), he became interested in development issues and decided to study economics.

Career

Solon Barraclough’s first work in the area of rural development was in the United States Forest Service, for which he was an Economist during the early 1950s.

From 1954 to 1958 Barraclough worked as an Assistant Forester in charge of farm forestry aspects of a rural development project and became Co-Manager of large cotton, livestock and forest estate for the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, in which position he fought for equal pay and working conditions for black workers in the forestry plantation. This brought Barraclough into conflict with the local authorities, especially with the neighboring white farmers and the White Citizens Council (now known as the Concerned Citizen Council) of Fayette County, who complained that he had raised forestry wages, shortened the workday, introduced incentive payments and similar innovations, as well as addressing “Negroes as Mr. and Mrs.”

However, and for this reason, he left this job, and in 1959 he was appointed as Agricultural Attache for the United States Department of State in Beirut, Lebanon.

In 1959 Barraclough was hired by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations to work in Santiago, Chile, where he worked first as Land Economics Expert from 1959 to 1961 under the aegis of the Inter-American Committee for Agricultural Development. Then Solon was a Regional Officer for Land Tenure and Agrarian Policy in Latin America and became Project Manager of the Agrarian Reform Training and Research Institute (ICIRA) from 1964 to 1973. In this role, he worked in Chile with the United Nations and the United States government to carry out land reforms aimed at benefitting the lower classes. After the conference at Punta del Este in Uruguay, concerning the land reform - masterminded by Barraclough, all Latin American governments gave their reluctant support.

In Chile Barraclough experienced three very different administrations: the conservative government of Jorge Alessandri (1958 - 1964), the centrist Christian Democrat government of Eduardo Frei (1964 - 1970), and finally the radical socialist government of Salvador Allende (1970 - 1973).

When a conservative government took power in 1973, Barraclough's house and Institute were raided by the Chilean military, and he became persona non grata. Agrarian Reform Training and Research Institute (ICIRA) was closed down, the land reform was reversed and the Chilean military seized land from the peasant classes and gave it back to wealthy landowners.

Barraclough tried to rekindle land reform in Latin America. In 1974 Solon became a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Project Manager of the National Agrarian Training and Research Programme (ICIRA) in Mexico but that country also became too right-wing to support his ideas. His later work involved researching sustainable agricultural development.

Barraclough was appointed as Director of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) in 1977 in Geneva, a position he held until his retirement in 1984. Solon was attracted to Geneva by the possibility of influencing developments in favor of the poor, by locating himself at one of the centers of the United Nations system.

After his retirement, Barraclough continued his links with United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) as Senior Consultant, retaining an office in The Palace of Nations building in Geneva. He also undertook consultancies for a variety of institutions such as the South Commission (South Centre), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), International Labour Organization (ILO), Oxford Committee for Famine Relief (Oxfam), Transnational Institute (TNI) and World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

For much of his life, Barraclough was associated with Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, first as a Tenured Professor of Agricultural Economics from 1963 to 1964 and thereafter as Adjunct Professor until 1983.

Barraclough was the author or co-author of numerous books on the agrarian question, including Agrarian Structure in Latin America (1973), An End to Hunger?: The Social Origins of Food Strategies (1991), and Rural Development and the Environment: Toward Ecologically and Socially Sustainable Development in Rural Areas (1997).

Achievements

• One of Barraclough’s major achievements at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) was the launching of the popular participation research programme to spot and foster young talent. Solon was particularly keen to promote researchers and activists from the Third World.
  
  Following his social concerns, Barraclough launched the Food Systems and Society project in the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), which focused particularly on the issues of food security.
  
  Barraclough’s Agrarian Reform Training and Research Institute (ICIRA) detailed studies of the land tenure situation in half a dozen other Latin American countries were recognized as the most significant and valuable piece of socio-economic investigation in Latin America in the 20th century. Without Barraclough's visionary insistence on research as the key to the subsequent action, in the teeth of opposition on the ground and within the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) bureaucracy, the Agrarian Reform Training and Research Institute (ICIRA) studies would never have got off the ground.
  
  Solon’s researches concentrating on the adverse social impact of the "green revolution" and examining the causes of famine became essential for the anti-globalization movement, concerned about the impact of neoliberalism on the Third World poor.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Meanings of Sustainable Agriculture: Some Issues for the South

    (An examination of the importance of agriculture in sustai...)

    2000
  • Agricultural Expansion and Tropical Deforestation: International Trade, Poverty and Land Use

    (There is no clear-cut causal relationship between interna...)

    2000
  • Agrarian structure in Latin America 1973
  • A preliminary analysis of the Nicaraguan food system 1982
  • The Rich Have Already Eaten: Roots of Catastrophe in Central America 1987
  • An End to Hunger?: The Social Origins of Food Strategies 1991
  • Forests and Livelihoods: The Social Dynamics of Deforestation in Developing Countries 1995
  • Rural development and the environment: Towards ecologically and socially sustainable development in rural areas 1997

Politics

Solon Barraclough was a fierce critic of neoclassical thinking and neoliberal policies anti-globalization movement as he could see their negative consequences on people’s lives.

Views

As an internationalist Barraclough was a great believer in the United Nations system as a vehicle for achieving a more equitable and humane world.

Solon fought against poverty, inequality, and hunger. He fought for disadvantaged people and for protecting the environment.

Barraclough spent a lifetime working on rural development, be it with poor landless blacks from the mud of the Mississippi basin or wretched rural laborers in the South, but principally in Latin America, where he lived and worked from 1959 to 1977 on research and training projects connected with agrarian reform and peasant livelihoods.

Quotations: "You can never expect to win, but the greatest sin is to give up trying."

Membership

• 

  American Economic Association , United States

• 

  Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

  1959 - 2002

• 

  United Nations Research Institute for Social Development

• 

  South Centre

• 

  International Fund for Agricultural Development

• 

  International Institute for Environment and Development

• 

  International Labour Organization

• 

  Oxford Committee for Famine Relief

• 

  Transnational Institute

• 

  World Wildlife Fund

Personality

Barraclough’s credo was his grandmother’s advice: “Boy, you can’t change anything but the worst sin is not to try.”

After leaving Chile, in rather tragic circumstances, Barraclough remained deeply attached to its people and concerned about their fate and well-being.

Barraclough was a good judge of a researcher’s ability, had a special flair for forming research teams, and was able to attract the best talent for his projects. He earned respect and trust for his fairness and firm principles and for encouraging people to develop their talents.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Solon was timeless. Never young, never old, so we never made allowances for either." - Ann Zammit.

Interests

• Writers

  Robert L. Heilbroner, Eric J. Hobsbawm, Karl Mannheim, Barrington Moore Jr., Gunnar Myrdal, Karl Polanyi, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Richard H. Tawney, Max Weber.

Connections

Solon Barraclough was married for many years to Frances H. Barraclough, with whom he adopted three children in Chile: Ana Villa, Kenneth M. Barraclough, and Esther Escobar.

In the 1970s, Solon married Isabel, with whom he had two sons: Solon Barraclough Jr. and Edgar Barraclough.

Solon Barraclough has two sisters.

Father:

Kenneth Barraclough

Mother:

Esther Barraclough

Sister:

Carolyn B. Storer

Sister:

Mary Edith Geis

grandchild:

Illary Barraclough

grandchild:

Alexis Barraclough

Grandson:

Thomas Barraclough

Grandson:

Ernesto Villa

granddaughter :

Tania Villa

granddaughter :

Gabriela Villa

Grandson:

Ignacio Escobar

Son:

Solon Barraclough Jr.

Son:

Edgar Barraclough

Daughter:

Ana Villa

Son:

Kenneth M. Barraclough

Daughter:

Esther Escobar

ex-wife:

Frances H. Barraclough

Wife:

Isabel Barraclough

Friend:

Ann Zammit

Ann Zammit is a Research Consultant at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.

Friend:

Peter Utting

Peter was the Deputy Director of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD).