Faith-based community organizing groups (FBCOs) have a well-established record of engaging citizens on issues of local concern. These groups increasingly recognize the need to engage with political structures beyond the local level, a process most often accomplished by forming federations of individual organizing groups. The geographic distances which separate groups within a federation present a formidable challenge to building solidarity and thus political power. This study examines participation data from two FBCO federations which reflect patterns of interorganizational collaboration at the scale of the metropolitan area. Using a set of longitudinal network analytic techniques, this study seeks to determine the relative impact of geographic distance on the likelihood of interorganizational collaboration. After controlling for such factors as denominational homophily, racial/ethnic homophily, and the overall activity level of each congregation this study finds that distance has a differential impact on relationship formation depending on the strength of relationship. For lower-intensity collaboration, distance plays only a very minor role in determining which groups work together; denominational and racial/ethnic homophily each have a large and positive impact on these sorts of relations. For higher-intensity collaborations, race and denomination appear to be insignificant while geographic distance plays a very strong (and negative) role in shaping which groups tend to work together.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-03312010-180137 |
| Date | 16 April 2010 |
| Creators | Tesdahl, Eric A. |
| Contributors | Paul W. Speer, Douglas D. Perkins |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-03312010-180137/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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