Doctoral Dissertation Research: Faith-Based Community Development as Social Movement Phenomena

University Of Iowa, Iowa City IA

Investigators

Abstract

In response to changes in public services in recent years, faith-based community development organizations have increasingly provided social services such as job training, low-income housing, and small business loans. Although rarely studied, these organizations take the form of cooperative collective action or social movements. This projects draws from organizational and collective action theories to understand the emergence and outcomes of faith-based community development. In so doing, it evaluates hypotheses concerning the growth of bureaucratic structures in these organizations as they grow older and larger, and the growing similarity of organizations in their "action frames." Field work in three faith-based community development organizations, including interviews with organizational leaders, examination of organizational documents, and observations of meetings and activities, provides the data to evaluate the theories and hypotheses. The results help understand an increasingly important social movement that the literature has largely ignored.