Emmanuel Todd has always had a knack for Timing. Still in the midst of the Cold war, he predicted as early as 1976, in “La chute finale” the collapse of the Soviet Union. He kept only a decade later, he was not only one of the most prominent and most controversial sociologists in France, but world known. It’s the books that caught the spirit of the time and their readers followed In the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003, and at the height of the transatlantic debate on the common Foreign and security policy of George W. Bush junior Todd wrote an obituary for the world power the USA – a Bestseller, not least in Germany the red-green government years. Here, Todd, in 2008, was able to achieve a further sales success: In “The relentless Revolution” implored he, together with his colleague Youssef Courbage Institut National d’études Démographiques in Paris, is a triumph of the Modern in all Islamic countries, and seemed to be the beginning of the Arab spring two years later.
But of course, you can also see everything differently. And this seems to belong as well to the business model of Todd as his steep theses. Criticism and opposition are finally good for the sales of political books. Todd was with his Thesis of the end of the United States as a world power, one is completely wrong or was not at least a little premature? Obama, far beyond America and Europe, as a great President and leader of the Western world, worshipped not to be followed Bush? And had not shown the allegedly “unstoppable Revolution” of Modernism in the Islamic countries even more than a stopped – whether in Egypt, Libya, Iran, or Turkey?
Targeted provocations
After the attacks in Paris in January 2015, Todd increased then in “Who’s Charlie?” once again his thesis of pleasure, by comparing of him in his home is now a greater perceived Islamophobia with anti-Semitism. To blame for this development, the Catholic Church, “Zombie-Indeed”, and the long shadow of the Vichy regime were in his eyes. Here, too, the Todd provoked, Echo wasn’t a long wait: intellectuals and politicians went at a distance. Prime Minister Manuel Valls criticized him in “Le Monde”. The free advertising worked again. Todd led the bestseller list.
Now he is back with a book, the more parts of the world, the Soviet Union, the United States, the Islamic countries, or its French home is enough as a starting bases for his thesis thunderstorm. Now it goes to humanity itself – and this right from the stone age to today. Its object the consideration of approaches Todd, it is first apart: The family constitutes the basic unit of humanity. From this he concludes that family structures of the unconscious Motor of history. Whether this is a “ground-breaking” realization of how the book self-praises, are likely to be doubtful. Humanity is in an even smaller basic unit disassembly: the people. One could conclude then that he was the Motor of history. And this has been done by the generations of historians, political scientists, and sociologists.
The odds of the Nations accept
so What is new in the history of mankind, as Todd told you? His narrative is not. Once again, it is related to the Thesis. And also, this sounds not really new: For peace in the world, it is urgently necessary to accept the hypothesis of the diversity of the Nations. New the reasoning is rather: This is the result of the differentiation of family systems.
to Whom this theory appears to be impractical, the Todd are current examples. Germany’s Insistence on standards, on legal, budgetary and monetary rules, he points to a structural malaise in the political leaders of a free and dominant society with family. He assigns also Japan, such a family structure, the question is, why Tokyo is not like Berlin in matters of budgetary policy, but gradually with more than Twice its economic output in debt – so heavily as no other industrial country in the world. For this opposite development, there must be, therefore, other reasons than the family structures of societies.
A more current observation of Emmanuel Todd’s, however, should encourage, in fact to Think about: The creeping crisis in the German policy after the Bundestag election in 2017, a little surprise, if you analyze the behavior of the voters, and the Serenity of the leading politicians, who negotiated much about the minor Details of their programs, indicated on a political class, the trouble have to come to an agreement, so the single line to a project. But here, too, the reason is not likely to search for it alone in the family structure of Germany, but – as always in the history of mankind, of varied nature. An experienced sociologists such as Todd, this is certainly known.
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culture Strong Thesis
Stephan-Andreas Casdorff
Emmanuel Todd: Sad Modern. From the French by Werner Damson and Enrico Heinemann. C. H. Beck Verlag, Munich 2018. 537 p., 29,95 €.
