Lineages of the Feminine

An Outline of the History of Women

By: Emmanuel Todd, Andrew Brown (Translator)

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Hardcover | 28 August 2023 | Edition Number 1

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Hardcover
336 Pages

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23 x 15.5 x 3

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We are experiencing an anthropological revolution. We see it in the #MeToo movement, in the denunciation of femicide and in an increasingly vociferous critique of patriarchal domination. Why this sudden rise of an antagonistic conception of the relationship between men and women, at the very moment when progress is accelerating and when the goals of first- and second-wave feminism seem on the verge of being achieved?

In this book, the anthropologist and historian Emmanuel Todd, while not underestimating the importance of crucial inequalities that remain, argues that the emancipation of women has essentially already taken place but that it has given rise to new tensions and contradictions. As women gain more freedom, they also gain access to traditional male social pathologies: economic anxiety, the disorientation of anomie, and individual and class resentment. But because they remain women, with the ability to bear children, their burden as human beings, although richer, is now more difficult to bear than that of men.

In order to understand our current condition, Todd retraces the evolution of the male/female relationship through the long history of the human species, from the emergence of Homo sapiens a hundred thousand years ago to the present. He also conducts a broad empirical study of the convergence between men and women today and of the differences that still separate them – in education, in employment and in relation to longevity, suicide and homicide, electoral behaviour and racism. He explores the relations between women’s liberation and other changes in contemporary societies such as the collapse of religion, the decline of industry, the decline of homophobia, the rise of bisexuality and the transgender phenomenon, and the decline in a sense of the collective life. And he shows how and why Western countries – and especially the Anglo-American world, Scandinavia and France – are, in their new feminist revolution, perhaps less universal than they think.

Industry Reviews

‘Todd brings his immense learning to bear on current understandings of the position of women in different parts of the world, with a particular focus on contemporary feminist positions in the West. What is original in his analysis is the way he brings his longue duree anthropological approach to bear on cultural representations of gender. He integrates the analysis of family and kinship with the status of women over ten thousand years. He shows that the post-industrial revolution coincided with the emancipation of women and an elevation of their status, but with freedom and emancipation, women confront a world in disarray and develop new anxieties. It is hard to think of another scholar with Todd’s range, command of detail and breadth of reading. This is an important book, one which will be studied and debated for years to come.’
David Sabean, Distinguished Professor of European History and the Henry J. Bruman Chair in German History, Emeritus, at UCLA

‘Lineages of the Feminine is a tour de force of thinking outside the box, adroitly grounded in historical anthropology and demography. The author’s deep knowledge of the history of family forms and relationships empowers him to open new debates about current social predicaments.’
Kenneth Wachter, Emeritus Professor of Demography and Statistics, University of California, Berkeley

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