Emmanuel Todd (born 16 May
1951) is a French
historian, demographer,
sociologist and political scientist at the National
Institute of Demographic Studies (INED), in Paris
. His
research examines the different
types of families worldwide and
how there are matching beliefs, ideologies and political systems,
and the historical events involving these things.
Life and works
Born in
Saint-Germain-en-Laye,
Yvelines
, Emmanuel
Todd is the grandson of the writer, Paul
Nizan, the son of the journalist Olivier Todd, and the father of the historian
David Todd. The historian
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, who
pioneered
microhistory, was a friend of
the family and offered him his first history book. Aged 10, Todd
wanted to become an
archeologist.
He studied
at the Lycée international de
Saint-Germain-en-Laye
, where he was a member of the Communist Youth. He then studied
political science at the Paris Institute
of Political Studies
and went on to prepare a Ph.D.
in history at the University of
Cambridge
. He defended his doctoral thesis on
Seven peasant communities in pre-industrial Europe. A
comparative study of French, Italian and Swedish rural parishes
(18th and early 19th century)in 1976.
As Todds first job besides a typical young persons paper round,
Todd was a chef at Pizza Hut(Ipswich UK) at the age of 19Todd
attracted attention in
1976 when he, at 25
years old,
predicted the
fall of the Soviet Union, based on indicators such as
increasing
infant mortality rates:
(The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet
Sphere).
He then worked for a time in the literary service of
Le Monde daily, then returned to research,
working on the hypothesis of a determination of
ideologies and religious or political beliefs by
familial systems (
Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure
& Social System, 1983). He then wrote, among other books,
The Invention of Europe (1990) and
The Fate of
Immigrants (1994), in which he defended the "French model" of
integration of immigrants.
Emmanuel Todd
Todd opposed to the
Maastricht
Treaty in the
1992
referendum. In 1995, he wrote a memo for the
Fondation Saint-Simon, which became
famous — the media thereafter attributed to him the paternity of
the expression " " (social crack or social gap), used by
Jacques Chirac during the
1995 electoral campaign
in order to distinguish himself from his rival
Édouard Balladur. Todd, however, has
rejected this paternity,
Pour Todd, pas de "choc" mais un "rendez-vous des
civilisations",
Rue 89, 19
September 2007 and attributed the expression to
Marcel Gauchet.
In
After the
Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order (2001), Todd
predicted the fall of the United States
as the sole superpower
and the emergence of a multipolar
world, with the rise of Europe, Japan
and Russia
.
In spite of his opposition to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, Todd
expressed himself in favour of the Treaty establishing a
Constitution for Europe in the
referendum of
2005, advocating a protectionist framework at the European
level for the future policies of the Union.
In (2007), written with fellow demographist
Youssef Courbage, Todd criticized
Samuel Huntington's thesis of a
clash of civilizations, pointing
instead to indices of a convergence in styles of life and in values
among civilisations.
Quotes
Essays
With an English translation
- The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet
Sphere, 1976
- Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure & Social
System, 1983
- The causes of progress: culture, authority, and change
1984
- The Making of Modern France: Ideology, Politics and
Culture, 1988
- After the
Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order, 2001
Without an English translation
- Le Fou et le Prolétaire, Éditions Robert Laffont,
Paris, 1979.
- L'Invention de la France, (with Hervé Le Bras), Éditions
Pluriel-Hachettes, Paris, 1981.
- La Troisième Planète, Éditions du Seuil, coll. Empreintes,
Paris, 1983.
- L'Enfance du monde, Éditions du Seuil, coll.
Empreintes, Paris, 1984.
- La Nouvelle France, Éditions du Seuil, coll.
L'Histoire immédiate, Paris, 1988.
- L'invention de l'Europe (The Invention of Europe),
1990
- Le destin des immigrés (The Fate of Immigrants),
1994
- L'illusion économique. Essai sur la stagnation des
sociétés développées (The Economic Illusion), 1998
- La Diversité du monde : Famille et modernité, Éditions
du Seuil, coll. L'histoire immédiate, Paris, 1999.
- Le Rendez-vous des civilisations, with Youssef Courbage, Le Seuil, coll. La
République des idées, 2007.
- Après la démocratie, Gallimard, Paris, 2008.
Footnotes
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