Richard Critchfield
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Richard Patrick Critchfield (March 23, 1931 – December 10, 1994) was an American journalist and
essayist An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...
who wrote principally about agricultural village life in developing countries.


Career

Richard Critchfield was born in
Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...
and grew up in
North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the Native Americans in the United States, indigenous Dakota people, Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north a ...
, the son of a country doctor. His older brother,
James H. Critchfield James Hardesty Critchfield (January 30, 1917 – April 22, 2003) was an officer of the US Central Intelligence Agency who rose to become the chief of its Near East and South Asia division. He also served as the CIA's national intelligence offic ...
, became the chief of the Near East and South Asia division of the US
Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
. Richard Critchfield graduated from the
University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...
, and earned a master's degree in journalism at
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
. He did additional graduate work at the Universities of
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and
Innsbruck Innsbruck (; bar, Innschbruck, label=Bavarian language, Austro-Bavarian ) is the capital of Tyrol (state), Tyrol and the List of cities and towns in Austria, fifth-largest city in Austria. On the Inn (river), River Inn, at its junction with the ...
, as well as
Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...
. Critchfield served in the
U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...
during the
Korean War , date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...
, and then began his writing career as farm editor of the ''Cedar Rapids owaGazette''. He served as a war reporter in the
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
for four years for the ''
Washington Star ''The Washington Star'', previously known as the ''Washington Star-News'' and the Washington ''Evening Star'', was a daily afternoon newspaper published in Washington, D.C., between 1852 and 1981. The Sunday edition was known as the ''Sunday Sta ...
'', and wrote for that newspaper for about a decade, as a member of its editorial staff. After leaving the ''Washington Star'', he became a freelance foreign correspondent on the
Third World The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the " First ...
, writing for numerous publications including ''
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'', '' The International Herald-Tribune'', ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', and ''
The Christian Science Monitor ''The Christian Science Monitor'' (''CSM''), commonly known as ''The Monitor'', is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles in electronic format as well as a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 as a daily newspaper ...
''. Critchfield published about ten books on a variety of topics, particularly villages in developing countries, but also including his
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family history and
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. Most notable among his books was ''Villages'', published in 1981 and described thirteen years later as "a classic study of the forces eroding small towns." ''Villages'' was based on his having "studied 18 villages in 13 countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America," and lived in those villages for long periods, "doing whatever was the dominant mode of earning a living." Critchfield described his form of writing as "village reporting." In the words of his ''New York Times'' obituary, he "lived and worked among villagers of the third world to tell their story to Western readers," often addressing changes in traditional ways of life. Critchfield believed that the U.S. defeat in Vietnam "was not a failure of power, but a failure of knowledge," that is, the result of a U.S. lack of understanding "the ordinary Vietnamese peasant out in his village and ... his Confucian culture." In a 1980 article he argued, presciently, that agriculture in the Soviet Union was failing (among other reasons, "the Russians can blame Marxism-Leninism for their farming failure"), while Chinese agriculture was succeeding (where the Great Leap Forward to collective agriculture "proved such a fiasco that the Chinese made a brisk retreat back toward the family farm"). He died in 1994 in Washington, D.C., after suffering a stroke; he was there for a party to celebrate the publication of his last book, ''The Villagers,'' a follow-up to ''Villages''. Critchfield won significant honors. In 1965, he won an
Overseas Press Club The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member, as was the war correspondent Peggy Hull. The club seeks to maintain ...
award for his reporting from Vietnam. He was awarded an Alice Patterson Fellowship in 1970 to report on the topic "Food Population Crisis in India, Indonesia and Iran." He was chosen as a
MacArthur Fellow The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...
in December 1981, the first year of that "genius grant" program, and accordingly awarded a $244,000 grant. On the other hand, Columbia professor of Middle Eastern Studies
Timothy Mitchell Timothy P. Mitchell is a British-born political theorist and student of the Arab world. He is a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia University. He was previously Professor of Politics at New York University.New Columbia Hire Backed Ac ...
has vocally criticized Critchfield, arguing that Critchfield's writing on Egypt plagiarized from older and uninformed sources, and was disingenuous or inaccurate in its descriptions of Egyptian life. Mitchell further asserts that Critchfield's work supported, and was in turn supported by, the U.S. academic and foreign policy establishment, noting that it was partly financed by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the U.S. Agency for International Development; that his brother was an early and senior CIA employee; that many of the sites of his reporting, such as Vietnam, Mauritius, and Egypt, were significant to U.S. foreign policy; and that he was on friendly terms with
Robert McNamara Robert Strange McNamara (; June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009) was an American business executive and the eighth United States Secretary of Defense, serving from 1961 to 1968 under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He remains the Lis ...
and "other figures associated with the CIA and the politico-military establishment."


Publications


Books

*''The Indian Reporter's Guide'' (1962) *''The Long Charade: Political Subversion in the Vietnam War'' (1968) *''Lore and Legend of Nepal'' (1971) *''The Golden Bowl Be Broken: Peasant Life in Four Cultures'' (1973 and 1988) *''Shahhat: An Egyptian'' (1978) * *''Those Days: An American Album'' (1986) * * *


Articles (some)


"The Alicia Patterson Foundation Newsletters of Richard Critchfield""The New Environment of Foreign Aid", ''The Nation'', May 15, 1972
''Christian Science Monitor'', April 22, 1980
"Science and the Villager: The Last Sleeper Wakes", ''Foreign Affairs'', Fall 1982
*"The Village Voice of Richard Critchfield: Bringing the Third World to the Fourth Estate", ''Washington Journalism Review'', October 1985


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Critchfield, Richard MacArthur Fellows 1931 births 1994 deaths 20th-century American essayists