In this exploratory case study, I compare and contrast the self-employment experiences and hiring practices of Black, Latino, and White business owners in the Atlanta construction industry. While much of the ethnic entrepreneurship literature has explained the racialized differences between racial and ethnic groups concerning self-employment and their hiring practices, few studies have been able to provide a clear explanation of the mechanisms racial groups use to maintain an economic and social edge without being overtly racist. Furthermore, many scholars have not yet begun to compare the experiences of Whites, Blacks, and Latinos in the South and how their racial ideologies and competition spur on discrimination and racism in a supposedly “color-blind” environment. To address these gaps, I interviewed 42 White, Black, and Latino sub- and general contractors in the Atlanta metropolitan area. I also collected observational data by visiting the worksites of my respondents and attending organizational meetings. Results suggest that even though many of my respondents indicated that racial dissimilarities were due to individual effort and poor motivation, I find that these color-blind ideologies work well to solidify the racial hierarchy and privilege White contractors. I also find that these ideologies block Blacks and Latinos from obtaining better financing, building a good reputation, or having access to important social connections that introduced most contractors to more lucrative prospects. More importantly, the White “good ole’ boy” networks worked as a mechanism to exclude Blacks and Latinos from more lucrative connections, and keep any interactions to a strictly employee-employer relationship. However, these business owners’ hiring practices are the same: they want the cheapest and hardest-working employees they can get, who are usually Latino laborers. By moving beyond the black/white dichotomy, this study offers new explanations of race relations and racial inequality in a metropolitan area recently affected by immigration. Finally, I show that competition pushes these contractors to be more discriminatory, especially when Latino immigrants threaten their "hard-earned" social positions. My empirical and conceptual analyses provide a good start toward explaining how racism and discrimination is organized and continues to persist in a major U.S. industry.

This study examines framing strategies employed by the social movement responding to homelessness in Atlanta, Georgia over the course of the 20th century. Drawing on archival records, media accounts and interviews with religious, business and government leaders, this longitudinal case study documents the varied casts of individuals and groups responding to the visible poor on the streets of the city. At the forefront of this project were religious groups serving variously as agents of social control or prophets calling for justice. Social movement framing theory, supplemented by resource mobilization and political opportunity theories, are applied to analyze movement processes. Framing theory provides an explanation for the coordination of collective action in social movements. However, the processes by which movements develop, contest and subsequently transform frames have received little scholarly attention and remain central questions for framing theory. This study addresses these questions. Analytically, I consider the movement in two waves: 1) an early movement dating from 1900 to 1970 and, 2) a modern movement covering the years from 1975 to 2005. In each period movement leaders adopted diagnostic, prognostic and motivational frames to organize and direct their actions. In the first wave, the Salvation Army and Union Mission drew on frames of sin and redemption to develop specialized, separate institutions and programs for the visible poor. The second wave of the movement developed its framing by incorporating elements from the civil rights movement, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker traditions. Religious leaders developed a church based, volunteer run shelter system providing free emergency night shelter to homeless persons. Freezing deaths on the streets of the city in 1981 led to rapid diffusion of church-based sheltering and adoption of a crisis/disaster frame. Central to these developments was a core group of religious leaders bringing a variety of personal experiences and visions to sheltering. The experience of sheltering and the confrontations with downtown business and political leaders fostered the development of frames with greater complexity and highlighted internal contradictions in the movement. New frames explaining homelessness variously emphasized either structural (injustice) or individual (disability) factors leading to framing conflicts within the movement.

Young women in Mexico and parts of Central America celebrate their fifteenth birthdays by following a complex rite of initiation, called Quinceañeras, a special ritual developed as a mixed heritage of the native people and their contact with European conquerors. The emerging Latino population in Atlanta celebrates this rite, facing the reality of being a minority racial group, although they maintain the same essence and goal than the celebration than in their country. This research explores this growing population group in Atlanta, in a special and significant cultural occasion, using an ethnographic approach methodology through participant observation and personal journals of the Quinceañeras as way to describe the meaning, implications and issues of this celebration for these girls and their families under a Social Constructionist Model of Ethnicity and Life Course Sociology theoretical framework.

Although the Vietnam War has long passed, it still defines the lives of many Vietnamese refugee women who endured its aftermath. This thesis examines how war and the refugee process has shaped the memories and changed the roles of Vietnamese refugee women age 55 and older. Based on 10 life history interviews with Vietnamese women living in Atlanta, this study finds they structured their narratives by awarding the period after the Vietnam War with the most prominence. Also, the research shows the greatest amount of role change and role strain occurred during this time. With the absence of their husbands in the war’s aftermath, the women experienced great familial and financial instability, forcing them to add the role of head of the household. I argue that during this period, they exhibited resiliency, shrewdness, and entrepreneurial spirit on a familial scale—a culmination of events I define as survival feminism.

This study examines the ways in which Black gay men in Atlanta create and experience community and culture every day, notwithstanding those discursive sources that situate life for Black gay men as particularly troubled. Drawing on ethnographic methods, including participant observation and interviewing, I attempt to show the complexity of Black gay men by exploring their world in Atlanta, Georgia, a city that has increasingly become known as a Black Gay Mecca. Qualitative research examining the ways Black gay men create and experience community has the potential to broaden academic discourses that have increasingly medicalized the Black gay male experience, and complicate popular social sentiment which (when recognizing the existence of Black gay men) often posits their life as one dimensional or dimensionless.

Background Clostridium difficile is a Gram-positive bacteria found in the large bowel or colon that causes mild to severe intestinal conditions and sometimes death. The primary risk factors for development of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) include healthcare exposure and recent antimicrobial use. The purpose of this study is to compare risk factors associated with CDI occurring in the Community to those associated with Healthcare Facility Associated CDI in the metro Atlanta population from September 1, 2009 – April 30, 2011. Methods Patients were identified through C. difficile surveillance program of the Georgia Emerging Infections Program (EIP). Prospective, population based, laboratory based surveillance for all positive C. difficile cases in the Georgia Health District 3 (HD3). Due to the sampling scheme, for this analysis CO-HCFA and HCFO cases were combined to make a Healthcare Facility Associated (HCFA) classification. Using SAS, a logistic regression analysis was performed to compare the associated risks between CA and HCFA classifications. Results The rate of CDI in the HD3 counties in Georgia is 84 per 100,000. The median age of infection is 63 and the age range in this study is 1 to 102 years old. CA cases represented 38% of the sampled population. CDI cases 65 and older were more likely to have a Healthcare association compared to CA-CDI cases (p Conclusion This study supports literature about CDI and antimicrobial use and looks further in to the role underlying conditions play as a risk factor for HCFA-CDI cases.

The Georgia Transportation Investment Act of 2010 divided Georgia into twelve special tax district regions granting each region the ability to vote for a region specific 1% sales tax for a ten year period. Drawing new boundaries, the legislation provided the state the ability to bypass the usual county and city politics and decision making which typically drives transportation investment in Georgia. In nine of the twelve regions, the sales tax referendum was defeated. Despite hopeful polling numbers, the Atlanta region overwhelmingly rejected the sales tax referendum with only 38% in favor. This thesis presents a case study of the Atlanta region, identified as the most diverse and complex region created by the legislation. Geographic voter results for the Atlanta region suggest a division between urban and suburban interests. The geographic results show a radial trend of increased no votes as the distance from the center of the city increased. Not one county of the 10-County region voted in favor of the referendum. Notably, the city of Atlanta passed the referendum 58 to 42 percent. Beginning over a year before until five months following the public referendum, 48 interviews were conducted. Participants included a mix of legislators with various levels of involvement in the drafting of the legislation, high level officials of multiple transportation agencies, local politicians involved in the project selection process, representatives from the business community, members of the campaign, and prominent members of the opposition. Those interviewed identified a number of contributing factors to the failure of the referendum. However, the consensus among those interviewed was that not one of the factors caused the failure of the referendum. Instead, the referendum was significantly influenced by overarching national issues such as the economy, the anti-tax movement, the looming presidential election, and distrust with all levels of government. These were the driving force in a "perfect storm" of factors which led to the ultimate failure of the referendum on July 31, 2012. This thesis provides lessons learned and strategies for the Atlanta region to implement during a future attempt. In addition, recommendations are provided for other regions in the nation looking to attempt similar referenda. Currently, the Atlanta region remains in a "transportation crisis." Given political barriers, the next attempt is likely a decade away. Until a new transportation funding source is acquired, the Atlanta region will continue toward a path of limited funding and increased congestion, losing businesses and talent to regions that are addressing their transportation issues.

The objective of this research is to analyze how the demographic characteristics and reported home locations of Cycle Atlanta smartphone app users compare to those of cyclists reflected by other datasets. The findings of this research show that the majority of Cycle Atlanta users are young, white males belonging to either a very high annual income group or a low annual income group, with fewer users belonging to middle-income groups. Most of the app's users live in east-side, ``intown' Atlanta neighborhoods. Other cyclist data for the Atlanta area show similar trends, although less pronounced than the trends exhibited by Cycle Atlanta users. Because smartphone apps such as Cycle Atlanta are a fairly recent innovation, there is still a great deal of uncertainty as to how equitably they can gather bicycle data. The research presented in this thesis has the potential to empower transportation planners to plan bicycle facilities that will benefit many different facets of the cycling community in Atlanta. This has the potential to increase the mode share of cycling in cities, which will reduce congestion and promote healthier lifestyles.

This study analyzes the relationship between comprehensive planning and actual development (as measured by changes in welfare) for 158 jurisdictions in metropolitan Atlanta. Relying on ecological economics for a method to measure welfare and planning literature for a method to evaluate the content of comprehensive plans, this dissertation uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Development is measured for four dimensions of sustainable development (economic, social, environment, and resource) using a modified Genuine Progress Indicator, and the metropolitan Atlanta area is found to have had weakly sustainable development from 1980 to 2000. In all places, economic welfare increased and resource welfare decreased. Social and environmental development had mixed results with about half of jurisdictions showing increases in environmental welfare while less than a handful showed increases in social welfare. Comprehensive plans were found to have a range of overall plan quality scores (the average of scores of policy statements in a plan) from 1.3 to 3.2 with a mean of 2.3 out of a maximum of 4. Of 2564 policy statements, 541 (or 21\%) were high quality statements scoring 4/4 points while 708 (or 28\%) received no quality points - they were weakly worded, vague, and not measurable. The average commitment to sustainable development (percent of policy statements in a plan that are related to a principle of sustainable development) is 39\% with a minumum of 9\% and a maximum of 80\%. Plan policy statements coded for principles of sustainable development were found to have significantly higher quality scores while overall plan quality scores were not found to be correlated to the plan commmitment to sustainable development; this implies that plans are generally either rigid (having highs scores) or visionary (having high commitment to sustainable development) overall. Plan quality was found to have a significant negative relationship with sustainable development, when dimensions are considered. This relationship was stronger for plans completed within the study time period (before 2000), suggesting that this relationship may be causal. The negative result is unexpected and leads to a rejection of the hypothesis that high quality planning would be significantly and positively related to development. On the other hand, plan commitment to sustainable development was found to be weakly positively related to sustainable development although the dimensions of this relationship changed over time. As such, the hypothesis that commitment to sustainable development would be significantly and positively related to development cannot be rejected. These results hold even when looking at distinct growth patterns across the metropolitan region, suggesting that the relationships between plans and development may be applicable to other places.

Local agencies must comply with environmental justice regulation and as such, it is important that they possess practical tools to identify target populations and assess impacts of projects, programs, and policies on these populations. These tools are not readily available or fully developed to evaluate impacts on a regional level, especially when the impacts are benefits rather than burdens. This issue comes into play when accessibility is assessed. This analysis measures accessibility for an environmental justice evaluation using spatial statistical clusters and cumulative opportunity. It shows that the majority of schools, libraries and local transit lines are within areas with high concentrations of target populations, however, park space is limited in these areas. Alternative approaches for environmental justice assessments of regional outcomes such as accessibility provide opportunities for MPOs to gain a greater understanding of the regional impacts of transportation improvements as well as more accurately comply with the spirit of environmental justice regulations.