Emmanuel Todd: Information from Answers.com

Emmanuel Todd

Born	16 May 1951 (1951-05-16) (age 58) Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
Nationality	France
Fields	Demographics, Political science
Alma mater	Paris Institute of Political Studies University of Cambridge
Known for	Predicting the fall of the Soviet Union
Influences	Tocqueville

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.

1 Life and works
2 Quotes
3 Essays
- 3.1 With an English translation
- 3.2 Without an English translation
4 Footnotes
5 External links

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: 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.

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 "fracture sociale" (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,^[1] 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 Le Rendez-Vous des Civilisations (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

“

The idea that, under the pretext that a country is democratic, its citizen, after an internal debate, can legitimately decide to bomb the citizens of another country is an idea that will end up killing democracy.^[2]

”

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

^ Pour Todd, pas de "choc" mais un "rendez-vous des civilisations", Rue 89, 19 September 2007 (French)
^ L'idée que, sous prétexte qu'un pays est démocratique, ses citoyens, après délibération entre eux, ont la légitimité de bombarder les citoyens d'un autre pays est une idée qui va finir par tuer la démocratie.
Les Etats-Unis sont plus dangereux que l'Iran pour la paix, interview in Marianne [1]