MARIAL CENTER COLLOQUIUM
Dr. Chris McCollum
MARIAL Fellow, Emory University
"Relatedness and Self-Definition: Two Dominant Themes in Middle-Class Americans' Life Stories"
Wednesday, November 1st, 2000, 4:00 p.m
A common social practice in contemporary American society is the exchange
of life stories. In a variety of situations, individuals are called upon to provide an account of who they are and how they got to be that way. In addition to revealing personal theories and beliefs about the self, life stories express the wider cultural frameworks that are available for
organizing and evaluating personal experience. Chris McCollum's talk will describe the cultural patterning of two genres of the life story: choice-of-profession accounts and falling-in-love stories. These accounts of personal experience, McCollum will show, are organized by contradictory
understandings of motivation and causation. To explain why middle-class Americans prefer to see themselves in these culturally constructed ways, he draws on psychoanalytic theory, arguing that the motivational force that lies behind these structural principles arises from a core emotional
conflict that middle-class Americans develop in early childhood, as they are preparing for, and being prepared for, entry into society.
Chris McCollum is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Emory Center for
Myth and Ritual in American Life (MARIAL). He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Duke University, and also holds a law degree. His research on personal storytelling brings together, and attempts an integration of, cognitive and psychoanalytic traditions in anthropology. This
work contributes to a growing area of interest in psychological anthropology, focusing on the complex interaction between cultural systems and self-understanding.
The MARIAL Center
Emory West, 4th Floor, Room 415E
Refreshments will be served
DIRECTIONS TO THE MARIAL CENTER
Convenient and quick transportation to Emory West is available
every 10 minutes from the Campus via shuttle (Route W, which can
be found on the corner of Asbury Circle and Pierce Drive, Along
Pierce Drive, or in Front of the Administration Building). It
is a 5 minute ride. Or you can drive and park close in at Emory
West, 1256 Briarcliff Rd. Tell the receptionist at the front window
that you are here for the MARIAL Center lecture.
