Doctoral Dissertation Research: Faith-Based Organizations, Race and Community Development

该研究项目研究信仰组织在应对当代城市贫困问题方面的作用。具体而言，研究人员试图了解信仰组织的社区发展工作如何以及在多大程度上加强或挑战城市贫困背后的种族不平等。通过一个信仰为基础的组织在亚特兰大，格鲁吉亚的工作的案例研究，研究人员将调查的方式，以信仰为基础的社区发展组织了解种族的基督教社区发展框架的连接和他们的活动对邻里发展和种族不平等的缓解的影响。 这项研究将为南亚特兰大历史上重要的非裔美国人社区提供亚特兰大社区在线音频和视频档案中的口述历史和未来，其中包括亚特兰大社区居民的录音。这项研究还将用于与信仰组织和非营利组织或决策机构进行建设性对话，这些组织和机构寻求使城市成为所有人，特别是那些沿着种族界线被边缘化的人更好的生活场所。为了实现这一目标，研究人员将在各种会议上传播研究成果。种族奖学金、城市宗教信仰复兴的文献以及宗教的文化地理学构成了该项目的理论基石。使用这个概念框架，研究探讨的过程中，参与者在基于信仰的组织网络解释的意义，种族和创造种族的意义，通过他们的工作。具体来说，研究人员将研究这种理解对信仰组织在塑造城市中的作用意味着什么，以及这些意义是如何在冲突或争议中得到加强的。为了解决这些问题，研究人员将与信仰组织的成员进行直接和参与式观察，半结构化访谈和文件收集。基督教社区发展协会（CCDA）是在城市工作的福音派基督教团体的全国网络，是该项目的主要案例研究对象。数据将使用批判性话语分析技术和解释方法进行分析，这种方法关注实地的复杂性和矛盾。

This research project studies the role of faith-based organizations in responding to poverty in contemporary cities. Specifically, the researchers seek to understand how and to what extent the community development work of faith-based organizations reinforces or challenges the racial inequalities that underlie urban poverty. Through a case study of one faith-based organization's work in Atlanta, Georgia, researchers will investigate the manner in which faith-based community development organizations understand the connection of race to the Christian community development framework and the impact of their activities on neighborhood development and the alleviation of racial inequality. The study will provide the historically significant African American neighborhood of South Atlanta with an Oral Histories and Futures in Atlanta Neighborhoods online audio and video archive that will include recordings of residents from a range of Atlanta neighborhoods. The research will also be used to engage in constructive conversations with faith-based organizations and nonprofits or policymaking bodies that seek to make cities better places for all people to live, particularly those marginalized along racial lines. To fulfill this goal, the researchers will disseminate research findings at a wide range of conferences and meetings.Scholarship on race, the literature on the resurgence of religious faith in cities, and cultural geographies of religion form the theoretical cornerstones of the project. Using this conceptual framework, the research examines the processes by which participants in faith-based organizational networks interpret the significance of race and create racial meanings through their work. Specifically, the researchers will examine what such understandings imply for faith-based organizations' roles in shaping cities, and how these meanings are reinforced, in conflict, or contested. To address these questions, the researchers will engage in direct and participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and document collection with members of faith-based organizations. The Christian Community Development Association (CCDA), a national network of evangelical Christian groups working in cities, is the project's primary case study subject. Data will be analyzed using critical discourse analysis techniques and an interpretive method that is attentive to on-the-ground complexities and contradictions.