Past Activities

Keynote lecture Emmanuel Todd

Utrecht University in collaboration with the Posthumus Institute will organize a keynote with Emmanuel Todd (National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED), Paris), a specialist in family systems.

Over the course of his career Emmanuel Todd has published on a wide range of topics, from political ideologies to development outcomes. The red line running throughout his work has been an interest in the way families are organized worldwide and the impacts this has at a societal level.

In recent years scholars started to empirically test Todd's premises on the persistence of family type institutions and the effects on economic, political and development outcomes. See for instance Duranton, Rodríguez-Pose, and Sandall (2009), who link Todd's family types in Europe to regional disparities in inter alia educational attainment, social capital, labor participation, wealth and inequality.

Most recently he has been working on a renewed version of his family classification scheme, adding further nuance and detail to his life's work.

In his keynote he will discuss two interrelated themes:

1. The link between traditional family systems and modern ideologies from the 17th to the 20th century (a "structuralist" model)
2. The emergence of family systems, starting from a common origin around 3000 BC (a diffusion model).

Finally, he will  conclude with some methodological aspects: combining social anthropology and historical demography i.e. the work of Murdock and Laslett.

Date, time, and location

Date: June 2, 2014

Time:  15:45-17:45 (coffee and tea from 15.15)

Location: Utrecht University, Drift 25, Room 102 (in case front doors of Drift 25 are closed, you can use the entrance via the garden at University Library, Drift 27).

Registration

If you would like to attend the keynote please send an email to cgeh.conferences@uu.nl