Emmanuel_Todd

Emmanuel Todd

Emmanuel Todd (16 May 1951) is a French historian, demographist, 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, Emmanuel Todd is the grandson of the writer Paul Nizan and the son of the journalist Olivier 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 completed his doctoral thesis in historical sciences at Cambridge University.

Todd attracted attention in 1976 when he predicted, at 25 years old, the fall of the Soviet Union, based on indicators such as increasing infant mortality rates: La chute finale: Essais sur la décomposition de la sphère Soviétique (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.

Opposed to the Maastricht Treaty to create the European Union, advocating "NO" to 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 "fracture sociale" (social crack or social gap), used by Jacques Chirac during the 1995 electoral campaign in order to distinguish himself from his rival Edouard Balladur. Todd, however, has rejected this paternity, 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.

Although Todd had rejected the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, he was a supporter of the "YES" for the 2005 referendum on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe.

In Le Rendez-Vous des Civilisations (2007), written with fellow demographist Youssef Courbage, Todd criticized Samuel Huntington's thesis of a clash of civilizations.

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.