Emmanuel Todd

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Emmanuel Todd (2014)

Emmanuel Todd (born May 16, 1951 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye , Yvelines department ) is a French anthropologist , demographer and historian. As an author , he has mainly published on issues of population development and family structures from an international comparative and historical perspective.

Life

Todd is the son of writer and journalist Olivier Todd and advertising executive Anne-Marie Nizan. His maternal grandfather was the philosopher and novelist Paul Nizan , and his paternal great-grandmother was British Vogue editor Dorothy Todd . His maternal grandmother was a cousin of the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss . He attended the Lycée International de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and was involved with the Communist Youth . In June 1968, at the age of 17, he joined the Parti communiste français , which he soon left. The historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie , a friend of his parents, aroused his interest in history.

Todd studied history and anthropology at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) and the University of Paris-Sorbonne and graduated from Maîtrise in 1972 . On the recommendation of François Furet, he published his first article in 1975 in the renowned journal Annales . At Trinity College of Cambridge University , he received his doctorate in 1976 at Peter Laslett a comparative historical and anthropological work on industrial pre-farming communities in France, Italy and Sweden. From 1977 to 1984 he was a literary critic for the French newspaper Le Monde . Since 1984 he has been working at the Institut national d'études démographiques (INED; "National Institute of Population Studies").

Todd is the author of numerous books. He dared to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union in his 1976 book La chute finale based on factors such as increasing child mortality. His work at the National Institute for Population Studies in France resulted in the works La troisième planète (1983), L'enfance du monde (1984), La nouvelle France (1990), L'invention de l'Europe (1994). He was an influential campaign worker for Jacques Chirac . In 1995, the Gaullist found the inspiration for his election campaign on the subject of fracture sociale (literally "social break", meaning "the social gap" or "the breaking up of society") in Todd's writings . For a time he acted as an advisor to President Chirac, but in 1997 again called for the election of the Communists because he rejected the EU Treaty of Maastricht .

Emmanuel Todd at a conference in 2008

Immigration became a major issue in France in the early 1990s. Emmanuel Todd joined the discussion by publishing the results of previous research in Le destin des immigrés (Eng. "The Fate of Immigrants") (1994). In this book, for which he received an award from the French Parliament, he uses demographic and historical material to show how family structure (especially succession) affects society and the economy . “ World Power USA: An Obituary ” (French: Après l'empire , 2002) is probably his best-known work, in which he describes the USA's loss of power and already gives thought to future international political constellations.

Research priorities

As the successor to his academic teachers Le Roy Ladurie, Peter Laslett and Alan Macfarlane , Emmanuel Todd is primarily concerned with historical anthropology and historical demography . He describes himself as a "product" of the Annales School , which Le Roy Ladurie is assigned, as well as the Cambridge School, which Laslett and Macfarlane represented. Todd also refers to the methods of the sociologist Fréderic Le Play and his theses on family structures from the 19th century.

He attaches great importance to demographic, family structure, religious and educational factors in the development of individual societies, but also in the development of the global political system. One of his theses says that many socio-political phenomena can be explained on the basis of the prevailing family structure in society. He developed a classification pattern of societies, with which the future development of these societies could be foreseen, also taking into account the increasingly global interactions of societal forms. Todd thinks that his theses are attacked primarily in the Anglo-Saxon countries and in France, where the formative role of family structures in favor of individualistic explanatory models or universalistic values ​​is largely negated. The economy is a relatively short-lived factor compared to belief systems, and these in turn change faster than family structures. Contrary to what Marx postulated, the economy does not create its own specific superstructure ; it is rather path-dependent , very conservative and only changes slowly.

Emmanuel Todd described himself as an "empirical Hegelian" and is considered to be the "key word for debates in the French center-left".

Publications (selection)

"The Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure and Social Systems" (with David Garrioch)

In his extensive book, published together with the historian David Garrioch, who teaches at Monash University today , Todd examines the influence of family structures on a range of social phenomena from partner choice, child mortality, infanticide and marital stability to suicide and inheritance law. Then he tries to explain the affinity of certain family types to religions and ideologies. He considers the authoritarian family type, which is also widespread in Germany, with primary inheritance rights of the eldest son, to be particularly susceptible to fascist ideologies. The Southeast Asian so-called "anomic family" does not show any ideological preferences. The endogamous extended family of the Orient with frequent relatives marriages tend to Islam . The egalitarian family with equality of all brothers and the choice of partner determined by the parents (e.g. in Russia or China) is prone to communist and socialist ideologies. The "absolute nuclear family " of the Anglo-Saxon-Norman world has committed itself to the values ​​of liberalism , capitalism and feminism .

In this book he prophesied the collapse of the Soviet Union and the separation of its Islamic regions as well as a conflict between the increasingly feminist Anglo-Saxon world and the world of Islam over the role of women.

"The Neoliberal Illusion - About the Stagnation of Developed Societies"

In his book “The Neoliberal Illusion” Todd describes the possible dangers of a European society that could develop into an oligarchy or plutocracy of transnational corporations and the wealthy upper class. With advancing, unlimited free trade and neo-liberal economic policy , a hardened struggle between the financial elite and the impoverished remaining population could set in on a larger scale.

In his book, Emmanuel Todd advocates the thesis that “the economic system […] is by no means the engine of history or its primary cause”, but rather “it is only a consequence of the forces and movements that work on deeper levels of social and spiritual structures ". According to Emmanuel Todd, however, one must also include and examine the cultural , economic and anthropological levels in order to be able to analyze the crisis of the industrialized world in more detail.

For Todd, the crisis of neoliberalism is "the result of long-term changes in the educational level of various populations". He sees this in the United States as "the most developed society that until recently took a leading role in human development"; however, this reached its “cultural limit” in the 70s .

The “intellectual wear and tear of the most powerful nation” is only hidden behind the “universalizing-arrogant facade of ultra-liberalism ” of the USA. In his opinion, there are two different anthropological systems of different societies: on the one hand that of the individualistic "nuclear family of the Anglo-Saxon world", on the other hand that of the "integrative ancestral family as in Germany or Japan". This integrative ancestral family tends to hold together the inheritance (especially in terms of land) and value production more than consumption. It is noticeable that these economies are particularly export-intensive. Todd's reasoning aims to refute the ideology and illusion of neoliberalism that is exacerbating the crisis of the industrial world and leading to dangerous credit-financed trade imbalances. Global competition and the permanent economic crisis split the nations into strong and weak and forced a new hierarchy on Europe.

"The Fate of Immigrants"

This book won the French National Assembly Prize. Todd deals with the adjustment and adjustment or non-adjustment of immigrants in the four large (western) immigration countries: USA, Great Britain, Germany and France (others are briefly analyzed). The “fate of the immigrants” in the various host countries cannot be adequately determined using political and ideological indicators. A realistic analysis of the consequences of immigration must also and first of all include the family structures, succession regulations and belief systems of both immigrants and countries of immigration.

Todd basically differentiates between two family structures: The symmetrical one is based on the equality of brothers (and less often sisters) in inheritance law, that is, all people (at least all men) are equally entitled to inheritance. Corresponding universalistic attitudes would be carried on in Europe by the egalitarian nuclear family of the Romance countries. On the other hand, a strong asymmetry of the family order characterizes the German and Japanese ancestral families with their preference for the firstborn. One as well as the other family structure would subconsciously (" a priori ") create an idea of ​​the equality or non-equality of people in general.

"World Power USA - An Obituary"

See main article: World Power USA: An Obituary

Here Todd outlines America's development from a stabilizing superpower to a troublemaker in the world. He refers to other political scientists , for example Zbigniew Brzeziński , Samuel P. Huntington , Francis Fukuyama , Henry Kissinger , Paul Kennedy , Robert Gilpin , incorporating their theories into his own or linking them with one another.

According to Todd, the USA's particular strength was its economic and ideological dominance over the non-communist part of the world during the Cold War . They achieved economic dominance through their reluctance to fight the two world wars and the resulting superiority over the weakened European powers and Japan . The ideological dominance, in turn, is a result of the bipolarity which the USA legitimized as the embodiment of free democratic values. However, this legitimation has been dwindling gradually since the collapse of the Soviet Union and will dwindle even more due to the unpredictable and destabilizing foreign policy of the USA .

In addition, Todd describes a reversal of economic dependence in his book. In the past the world was dependent on the USA, now the USA is dependent on the rest of the world. One reason for this is the American problem of consuming more than producing and the resulting trade deficit, which has been growing steadily since the 1970s.

Furthermore, Todd uses empirical data to show that transactions between Russia, Europe and Japan are increasing, while investments in the USA are decreasing. Todd sees Europe, Russia and Japan as the most important forces in the future global system of equilibrium that he outlines.

Todd addresses another reversal in his book. His thesis is that today's democracies are developing towards oligarchies , while developing countries are becoming more and more democratic due to increasing literacy levels and a higher level of education .

"The Unstoppable Revolution" (with Youssef Courbage)

Together with Youssef Courbage, the research director from Syria at the Institut National d'Études Démographiques in Paris and thus his superior, Emmanuel Todd published “Le Rendez-vous des civilizations” in autumn 2007. The title of the German translation is "The unstoppable revolution: How the values ​​of modernity are changing the Islamic world". It deals with the lagging development of Muslim society.

In the book, the authors concentrate more on their theory that literacy , especially among women - and secondarily also among men - has a decisive influence on a society's birth rate, and that a society's entry into the modern age is initiated by the tendency for the birth rate to fall . The way in which the demographic revolution takes place is determined to a large extent by the prevailing family structures of a country, but not by religion. However, a previous religious crisis seems to be part of the standard development.

The authors provide a large number of examples for the regionally different characteristics of the fundamental developments presented and support their theses with a large number of figures, statistics and graphs.

"Who is Charlie?"

After the attack on the editors of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, Todd published an essay in which he pointed out that many right-wing anti-democrats also took part in the solidarity protests ( Je suis Charlie ) . The solidarity with "Charlie" is often not a commitment to democracy, but a bourgeois anti-Islamism. France is politically and ideologically dominated by the so-called "MAZ" block, an abbreviation for the middle class, the old and the zombie Catholics Todd calls them. The MAZ block consists of those elites who fear for their power and their prosperity. They mainly blamed Islamic migrants and workers for their problems and became increasingly radicalized. While the immigrants who are banished to the shabby suburbs, the banlieues , also develop more and more hatred, "the workers" run frustrated into the clutches of the far-right Front National , a party founded by a Holocaust denier. This constellation endangers democracy.

"Sad Modernity"

In the book "Traurige Moderne", published in German in 2018, Todd explains how different family systems have spread since the Stone Age , which still shape mentalities to this day . Even after secularization , religion continues to work as an unconscious system of rules, even if it is no longer practiced; In this context, Todd speaks of zombie religions (“zombie Catholicism”, “zombie Lutheranism”). He describes the dynamics of American society with its "primitive" (because it resembles the original human family structure) nuclear or small families without complex family relationships and compares them with the immobility of cultures with highly complex patriarchal communitarian large families . Where children are treated unequally in terms of inheritance law (and this begins with early agricultural society), a worldview emerges that is hierarchical and authoritarian, but which can lead to the undivided accumulation of property and knowledge. On the other hand, where property is inherited in an egalitarian manner, as in northern France, or freely inherited without fixed rules, as in Anglo-Saxon countries, people are more likely to be viewed as equal. The “communitarian” - exogamous families of the fraternities, which have their origins in the nomadic societies, lead, like the endogamous communitarian societies of the ancient oriental agricultural societies, to a devaluation of the role of women.

Spread of different family systems in Europe according to Todd. Green tones: forms of the ancestral family (the darker, the more pronounced). Yellow shades: nuclear family. Orange tones: communitarian family. Gray: endogamous-patrilocal family. Red stripes: matrilocal family.

For Todd, it is the family structures that ultimately led to the idea of ​​human rights emerging in the “Anglosphere” and in France, while in the “ancestral families” (parents live here with the eldest son who has everything or one a disproportionate share inherits) societies such as Germany, Japan and Korea enforced authoritarian ideas. These societies tended towards militarism and achieved through the (compulsory) recruitment of younger, non-inheriting sons, high recruitment rates based on the total population (in Prussia or Sweden over 7% in the 18th century). Todd postulates a conflict between the German ancestral family society and immigration from endogamous-communitarian family structures as they exist in the Arab world. Where these deeply rooted differences are not taken into account in resolving the current crises, Todd said, democracy is at risk. Todd predicts the rebellion of many EU countries against Germany, which imposes economic and political universalistic values ​​on the EU without believing in them or realizing them in the deep structures of German society. In Germany, "forgetting family values" (which include the assumption of innate inequality and authoritarianism expressed in the primogeniture ) became "therapy" after the Nazi era.

Today's paradox consists in the fact that the “extroverted” German economy, which is dependent on foreign trade, with its sudden opening to immigration, could lead the country to retreat to itself and to renewed internal hardening, which “out of fear of the differences the morals can be regulated by the police ”. Todd also comments on the topic of growing populism : As in the USA, the separation of the academic classes from the rest of the population in Europe has "led to a stunting of the democratic feeling" that was previously anchored in the "homogeneity of mass literacy". The democratic feeling in continental Europe is stronger than in the USA because of familial and religious reasons, authoritarian and shaped by inequality, which could lead to an uprising against the European system. The portrayal of Europe as the birthplace of liberal democracy is a “straightforward intellectual hoax”. In Germany one is mistaken if one considers France to be a liberal democracy.

reception

Günther Nonnenmacher criticizes Todd's deterministic diagnosis in the FAZ , which also “insinuates that German politics is pursuing perfidious plans across all parties. It is a diagnosis that is actually receiving attention in the political spectrum of France (and not only there). After all, almost half of the French voted in the last presidential election for the right-wing populist Marine Le Pen , the left-wing tribune Jean-Luc Mélenchon and other radicals who spread similar theses in their election campaigns ”. However, Nonnenmacher does not specifically name these positions. Marko Martin asks himself: “Todd, a Thilo Sarrazin for the educated classes?” And considers the book “to be one of the sad examples of conspiracy-theoretical, elitist bashing that flirtatiously looks to both sides: to the far right as well as to the left. "

For Claudia Mäder in the NZZ , "a story that ends with the following words in view of the authoritarian tendencies in Europe today ... leaves no unanswered questions and very little space for the acting individual".

Peter Burri writes in the Basler Zeitung : Todd “sees the danger that state power in Paris could“ take off ”and even develop into an“ authoritarian regime ”. [...] Whatever you think of him, Todd is an interesting voice from our neighboring country, whose president is evoked in Brussels and especially in Germany as the savior of the EU. "

Web links

Commons : Emmanuel Todd  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

swell

  1. ^ Marie-Laure Delorme: Olivier and Emmanuel Todd, les intellectuels rivaux. In: Vanity Fair , No. 51, October 2017.
  2. ↑ Clémentine Autain: Emmanuel Todd, histoire de familles. In: regards.fr , April 22, 2011.
  3. ↑ a b Emmanuel Todd in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  4. ^ A b Pierre Salvadori: "Après la democratie", a conversation with Emmanuel Todd. In: Le Grand Continent , January 8, 2018.
  5. ↑ Emmanuel Todd: Mobilité géographique et cycle de vie en Artois et en Toscane au XVIII e siècle. In: Annales - économies, sociétés, civilizations , Volume 30 (1975), No. 4, pp. 726-744.
  6. ^ Emmanuel Todd: Seven peasant communities in pre-industrial Europe. A comparative study of French, Italian and Swedish rural parishes (18th and early 19th century). Dissertation, Univ. Cambridge 1976.
  7. ↑ Todd, Emmanuel: Before the Fall: The End of Soviet Rule. 14th edition. Munich: Piper, 2003. ISBN 978-3-492-04535-3 .
  8. ↑ "The Germans Islamized the Turks". In: Frankfurter Allgemeine , January 8, 2001.
  9. ↑ Martina Meister: On the "Muslim hostility of the middle class" . In: Welt , November 12, 2015.
  10. ↑ Dorothea Hahn: "Maastricht - this is the abyss" - Why the communists are currently the most interesting party in France. A conversation with Emmanuel Todd. In: taz , May 13, 1997, p. 10.
  11. ^ Nicolas Journet: Au début était le couple. In: Sciences Humaines , No. 230 (10/2011), p. 45.
  12. ↑ Emmanuel Todd: Sad Modern Age. Munich 2018, p. 28.
  13. ↑ So also Michael Witzel : The Origins of the World's Mythology. Oxford University Press, New York 2011, p. 407.
  14. ↑ Features of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Saturday, February 14, 1998, page 23
  15. ↑ Dominik Geppert : A Europe that doesn't exist. The fatal explosive power of the euro. Europaverlag Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-944305-18-9 , p. 81
  16. ^ First 1985, reprinted 1989 by Blackwell Publishing Co., Oxford, ISBN 978-0-631-15491-4
  17. ↑ Todd, Emmanuel: The Neoliberal Illusion: About the Stagnation of Developed Societies. Zurich: Rotpunktverlag, 1999. ISBN 3-85869-177-1 .
  18. ↑ Todd, Emmanuel: The Fate of Immigrants: Germany - USA - France - Great Britain. Hildesheim: Claassen, 1998. ISBN 3-546-00135-4 .
  19. ↑ Courbage, Youssef; Todd, Emmanuel; Heinemann, Enrico (translator): The unstoppable revolution: How the values ​​of modernity are changing the Islamic world . Munich: Piper, 2008. ISBN 978-3-492-05131-6 .
  20. ↑ Emmanuel Todd: Who is Charlie? The attacks in Paris and the mendacity of the West . CH Beck, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-406-68633-7 . ; French edition: Qui est Charlie? , 2015.
  21. ↑ In German, an appropriate translation would be “pseudo-Catholics”, ie people who hardly ever attend a church service.
  22. ↑ Emmanuel Todd: Sad Modern Age. A history of mankind from the Stone Age to Homo americanus . CH Beck, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-406-72475-6 . ; French edition: Triste modernité , 2017.
  23. ↑ Todd 2018, p. 31.
  24. ↑ Todd 2018, p. 30.
  25. ↑ Todd 2018, p. 444.
  26. ↑ Todd 2018, p. 446 f.
  27. ↑ Günter Nonnenmacher: It's all a question of family ties: With Germany scolding: Emmanuel Todd takes a start from the depths of the Stone Age for his political theses . In: FAZ, August 21, 2018.
  28. ↑ Marko Martin: Elite bashing in an elitist style. In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur, September 13, 2018.
  29. ↑ Claudia Mäder: Historians swarm into space and tell the story of "everything" , in: NZZ, 22 August 2018.
  30. ↑ Emmanuel Todd reads the riot act in Europe. In: Basler Zeitung, March 22, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Todd, Emmanuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French anthropologist, demographer and historian
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Germain-en-Laye , Yvelines