埃马纽埃尔·托德

埃马纽埃尔·托德（法语：Emmanuel Todd，法语发音：[ɛmanɥɛl tɔd]；1951年5月16日—）是法国历史学家、人类学家、人口学家、社会学家和政治学家，就职于巴黎国家人口研究所（INED）。他的研究考察了世界各地不同的家庭结构及其与信仰、意识形态、政治制度和历史事件的关系。他还发表了多篇政治论文，在法国得到广泛报导。

Emmanuel Todd (French: [ɛmanɥɛl tɔd]; born 16 May 1951) is a French historian, anthropologist, demographer, sociologist and political scientist at the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris. His research focuses on family structures across the world, and explores how they relate to beliefs, ideologies, political systems, and historical developments. He has also authored several political essays, which have received wide coverage in France.

Early life and education

Born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Yvelines, Emmanuel Todd is the son of journalist Olivier Todd and Anne-Marie Nizan. His paternal grandfather, Julius Oblatt, was of Austrian Jewish background, and his paternal grandmother, Helen Todd, was the illegitimate daughter of British magazine editor Dorothy Todd.

Todd’s maternal grandfather was the writer Paul Nizan. The historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, a pioneer of microhistory, was a close family friend and later became Todd’s mentor, training him in the discipline of historical anthropology.

Todd attended the Lycée international de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. During the May 68 protests, at age seventeen, he joined the Communist Youth, though his involvement was brief.

He later studied political science at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) and went on to pursue a Ph.D. in history at Trinity College, Cambridge, under the supervision of two anthropologically minded social historians: Peter Laslett and Alan Macfarlane. In 1976, 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).

Career

Todd gained public attention in 1976, at age 25, when he predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, basing his analysis on indicators such as rising infant mortality rates, and methodologically inspired by approaches of the annales school. Commentator Jacob Collins also notes a few references to George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. This prediction was published in La chute finale: Essais sur la décomposition de la sphère Soviétique (The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere).

He later worked briefly in the literary department of Le Monde daily, before returning to academic research. His subsequent work focused on the hypothesis that familial systems shape ideologies and religious or political beliefs (Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure & Social System, 1985).

He has been employed by the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris.

Works

Among other books, Emmanuel Todd wrote The Invention of Europe (1990) and Le destin des immigrés (1994) (The fate of immigrants), in which he defended the "French model" of immigrants integration.

Todd opposed the Maastricht Treaty in the 1992 referendum.

In 1995, he authored a memo for the Fondation Saint-Simon, that gained widespread attention; the media subsequently credited him with coining the phrase "fracture sociale" (social crack or social gap), which was notably used by Jacques Chirac during the 1995 presidential campaign to distinguish himself from his rival Édouard Balladur. However, Todd denied originating the term and attributed the expression to Marcel Gauchet.

In The Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure & Social Systems, Todd explores how diverse family structures influence beliefs, ideologies, political systems, and historical development.