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.