Talk:Emmanuel Todd

L'origine des systèmes familiaux

Arguably deserves its own page. It really does make sense when he calls it "his life's work". Yet, if a web search of "Emmanuel Todd" is anything to go by, it is nowhere near being his most discussed work, and it is not yet translated into English. He refines and revises some of his notions and categories that have appeared in his previous work.

It is a reference work, not the presentation of an original hypothesis or original idea. If he had given his data to someone else, they would have written a similar book. They would have presented the same data and the same conclusions would have emerged from the data (for example, that the most ancient form of family structure is that which is most associated with "modernity", namely the nuclear family with no distinct preference for one gender over the other, - the least authoritarian of the family types he defines).

It seems that nothing similar has ever been attepted with such rigour - an with such a large base of data to draw on.

In volume 1, he draws on a selection of 214 anthropological studies (from the many more he had consulted) to provide a sample to show how family systems are spread throughout Eurasia. ("Family Structures" he categorizes as having male succession, female succession, or both in equal measure, of giving equal inheritance to each child /male child /female child or of having a system of unequal inheritance favouring first-born, last born, etc. etc.). He takes each geographical area, examines the spread of family systems there in more detail, discusses relevant difficulties in selecting/interpreting the available anthroplological data, and notes what the theory of "conservatism of peripheral zones" would predict. He then surveys the available "historical" data, again noting any shortcomings in its availability or reliabilty, and correlates the map with the history which emerges from the various sources. (The sources are eclectic: dna analysis of the bones of ancient Japanese fisherman shows that there was no rule establishing that sons stayed in the family of their fathers while daughters were sent to join another family; elsewhere legal documents describe the practice of the inheritance going to the eldest son; Herodotus, although not taken at face value, is a source on the relative position of women among the people of the Eurasian Steppe).

His methodology is confirmed as reliable, ie the assumption that what you see on the edge of an area will, if there is no other influence at play, indicate the earlier state of the whole area (a methodology used in the study of languages).

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.98.32.90 (talk) 12:49, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

... and now I see a minor argument against giving it its own page. It is something I should have mentioned anyway:

I am only going by a websearch, but appears that there just have not~been enough critical responses to the book. Here is the first critical one I have found (mostly good, but only 2 pages, and some I consider innacurate) Favier Yann « L'origine des systèmes familiaux. Tome 1 : L'Eurasie, Emmanuel Todd, Gallimard, 747 p., 2011.. », Recherches familiales 1/2013 (n° 10) , p. 193-194

URL : www.cairn.info/revue-recherches-familiales-2013-1-page-193.htm.

DOI : 10.3917/rf.010.0193.

I don't see it as an obstacle, but there would need to be an explicit mention that there is not an open consenseus either in favour of the book or aginst it, and not much critical discussion of its importance.

There are many sources that offer relatively uncritical acclaim, but opinions of book reviewers in a newspaper do not mount up to "peer review".

edit although Monique Vézinet has witen a more academic (and favourable) respone: http://www.gaucherepublicaine.org/respublica/lorigine-des-systemes-familiaux-tome-i-leurasie-par-emmanuel-todd/3944

77.98.32.90 (talk) 15:39, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Dear editor 77.98.32.90 - please excuse my writing to you here in this way - and please, other editors, excuse my writing to an editor so out of place like this! - but you do not have a talk page, so I wasn't sure just how else to reach you! You made some good contributions, going back almost a year now, to the Earth system science article. Shortly afterward, a great deal of material in the entry was removed by Toby Tyrrell, a prominent critic of Gaia theory, which I found to be a conflict of interest, as well as wrongheaded. I then tried to do a new version of the expunged Gaia material, making a more in depth discussion of the past relationship, etc. This Gaia material has been continuously removed and the subject of more or less constant edit warring ever since. If you care about this material, it could surely use more editors who don't feel the need to expunge "Gaia" from the discussion!! Very best, Terradactyl (talk) 02:21, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Bibliography

"La Diversité du monde", listed in Essays without an English translation, is the re-edition of the two books, "La Troisième planète" and "L'enfance du monde", into a single book with an added preface. These two books both have an English translation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Batankyu (talk • contribs) 12:29, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

It seems to me somewhat illogical to make a catalogue of works untranslated into English, and then to list them using (invented) English-language titles. I think it would make better sense to present a single bibliography of Todd's works in order of their first publication, adding the details of English-language translations item-by-item, where applicable.

Something like this:

------

• La chute finale: Essai sur la décomposition de la sphère Soviétique, Éditions Robert Laffont, 1976.
  • The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere (trans. John Waggoner), Karz Publishers, 1979.
• Le Fou et le Prolétaire, Éditions Robert Laffont, 1979. On the pre-1914 elites of Europe, which led to World War I and totalitarianism.
• L'Invention de la France: Atlas anthropologique et politique, Éditions Hachette, coll. Pluriel, 1981.

etc.

------

-- Picapica (talk) 08:15, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Criticism

That section as currently written pretty much confirms the man's hypothesis about a butthurt, has-been West.

He is an academic and as such he's quite free to express his academic views, whether or not those are adulatory or comfortable to a part of the world.

I find Wikipedia amusing. :) 37.188.179.77 (talk) 21:24, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree. The rant about Putin is just a rant, gaming the Wikipedia rule about references. It should be removed. The further work should go in a 'see also' bit.. perhaps. I have read "after the empire" but not the referenced counter article. It would need to be equally authoritative to be kept. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.246.82.59 (talk) 07:36, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

"Whose propaganda he spreads"

That sounds too accusational. Use something more nuetral like "claims based on russian state propoganda" 2409:40F3:2:B3E5:852:82FF:FED4:296B (talk) 10:47, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

If one is going to restrict editing...

one should be impressed to show regular edits, with scholarly intent and progress, moving the article toward GA status. The presence of the current article's copyedit tag, its current array of sections (including the single-sentence Quotes), and the overly brief and poorly constructed Ukraine argument (suggesting bias, and questionably reliant entirely on French-language content), taken together, do not inspire confidence with regard to the status or direction of the article. (A former research university faculty member, and former registered editor of WP) 71.239.132.212 (talk) 20:42, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Edit request, 17 December 2024

• What I think should be changed:

Either, an article without the restrictions on editing, as having them for a poorly visible French academic is certainly not serving the encyclopedia; or, changes to the structure of the article as follows:

1, Add a new section, "Awards and recognition", and populate it with the following content:

Todd's recognitions include the Prix de l'Assemblée nationale 1995 [National Assembly Prize for 1995], for his Le Destin des immigrés, and the Prix Paul-Michel-Perret 2012 of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, for his L'Origine des systèmes familiaux, volume 1: L'Eurasie.

2A, Create an "Early life and education" section, and paste into it the first paragraph of section "Life and works"; 2B, add the following section tag: {{Third-party | section | date = December 2024}}, or more to the point, add following the sentence ending in "Dorothy Todd", and for the final sentence of the paragraph (because we cannot know from a primary source, other than by WP:OR, that the "Emmanuel Todd" mentioned, is the same as the subject of the article), and then add for every other sentence of the paragraph (because essentially all of it currently violates WP:VERIFY).

3, The single, context-free quote in the very short section "Quotes", should be deleted (with the quote incorporated, at an editor's discretion, at another point in the article).

4, The section "Criticism" presents two issues, in inverse chronological order. The issues (and their citations) should be in chronological order; hence, order of the two paragraphs should be inverted.

5A, The section "Criticism" should have added the following section tag:{{multiple issues | section = yes | {{Unbalanced | section | date=December 2024}}{{cite check section | date=December 2024}}}}; 5B, each of the clusters of French language sources should be followed by this inline tag: .

6, The long quote-containing "Popular culture" section should be deleted. (The alternative is another section tag, on an unsourced, unnecessary section reliant on WP:OR.)

• Why it should be changed:

In order,

1, because this is a standard section at the English WP, because the information is germane to a proper understanding of the subject, and because the proposed content is validly sourced.

2A, because this is a standard opening section of biographical content at the English WP, because having a more focused section shortens an overly long and unfocused section that follows, and because breaking the editorial needs of the article—in this case, the paucity of sources leading to thoroughgoing WP:VERIFY violations in the "Life and works" section—into smaller, more readily achievable units makes improvement of the article more likely.

3, without wikilawyering, because neither the encyclopedia, nor good English prose-writing in general, favor constructions where single elements are separated out, without context, into separate paragraphs (and certainly not sections); left to editorial discretion is the question of whether this favorite quote of some earlier Wikipedia editor is relevant and notable enough to appear elsewhere in the article.

4, presentation of scholarly arguments in chronological order is natural, and acknowledges that earlier events often are antecedents to later events. Moreover, restoring this logical order supports further development of the section, diverting editorial impulse to put the latest identified issue first (instead, requiring others to follow a prescribed order or progress of events and ideas).

5A, there is a consensus in the postings from editors above, that we editors here share, that the "Criticism" section is not neutral, and therefore violates WP:NPOV. As well, rather that presenting facts, it presents conclusions drawn from facts, and does so with sources that the vast majority of editors at WP cannot use to verify the claims of the text. When using loaded language like "propaganda", editors need to proceed carefully, in this case, via quotes of the texts stating that others have concluded this—making clear that the word choice and broader sentence content do not constitute a case of WP:OR on the part of WP editors. 5B, We have attempted to find English language sources to support the contention of this section, and have failed to find a reputable source written in English. Until such time that better sourcing can be provided, editors controlling this section need to supply quoted statements from the articles cited, so as to make verification (and further editing of the article to these texts) practically possible. It is one thing to confirm a foreign language quote; time-wise, it is quite another to have to read several foreign language texts looking for another editor's perception in them. As it stands, despite multiple citations, the questioned content is essentially unverifiable (violates WP:VERIFY in a practical sense), because few can (and no one to date has) been able to verify the content.

6, The content is fully WP:OR—arguing from no source but the primary source to a popular novel that purportedly references a Todd work. Someone needs to make this connection, unless the work of fiction mentions Todd (and it does not). The association exists in the minds of a WP editor. Until it exists in a source, it does not belong in the article.

• References supporting the possible change:

These are incorporated in the proposed changes, above (as they should be), and when not possible—when the existing content lacks valid sources—such issues are honestly called out, for reader and editor benefit.

71.239.132.212 (talk) 22:38, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

References