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

这项研究项目研究了信仰组织在应对当代城市贫困中的作用。具体地说，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造成城市贫困的种族不平等。通过一个基于信仰的组织在佐治亚州亚特兰大工作的案例研究，研究人员将调查基于信仰的社区发展组织如何理解种族与基督教社区发展框架的联系，以及他们的活动对社区发展和减轻种族不平等的影响。这项研究将为历史上重要的南亚特兰大非裔美国人社区提供亚特兰大社区的口述历史和未来在线音频和视频档案，其中将包括一系列亚特兰大社区居民的录音。这项研究还将被用于与以信仰为基础的组织和非营利组织或政策制定机构进行建设性对话，这些组织寻求让城市成为所有人，特别是那些被种族界限边缘化的人更适合居住的地方。为了实现这一目标，研究人员将在广泛的会议上传播研究成果。种族学术、关于城市宗教信仰复兴的文献以及宗教的文化地理构成了该项目的理论基石。利用这一概念框架，该研究考察了基于信仰的组织网络中的参与者通过他们的工作来解释种族的意义和创造种族意义的过程。具体地说，研究人员将研究这种理解对于基于信仰的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被强化、冲突或竞争的。为了解决这些问题，研究人员将对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)是一个在城市工作的福音派基督教团体的全国性网络，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注重实地复杂性和矛盾的解释方法进行分析。

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.