Subtitle: Urban Restructuring and Religious Ecology In A Southern Exurb
Author: Nancy L. Eiesland
Subject: Religion/Society
Paperback ISBN 0-8135-2738-4
Pages: 256 pp.
Description: The first book to develop an extensive local analysis of religious organizational ecology

"The book's rich details and warm stories, framed in solid organizational theory, make it essential reading both for scholars trying to understand the changing religious landscape and for religious leaders trying to find their role in it."-Helen Rose Ebaugh, President, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion

"Writing with wisdom and wit, Nancy Eiesland introduces religious ecology through a textured case study of urbanization and religious structuring in a Georgia town."-R. Stephen Warner, professor of sociology, University of Illinois, Chicago

A Particular Place tells the story of the dramatic changes that take place in the religious lives of a community faced with urban restructuring-in this case, Dacula, Georgia, a once-quiet small town on the outskirts of Atlanta. The demographics of Dacula were drastically altered by population influx, service sector development, and housing expansion.

Nancy L. Eiesland provides a pathbreaking, qualitative study of how local religious congregations altered themselves, their community, and their relations with one another in light of this disruption to their social order. The author gauges these changes by examining the lives of area newcomers and of long-time residents. She discusses their responses to the emergence of a megachurch and arising conflicts in their community, and investigates the wrenching processes of congregational birth and death.

Applying population ecology approaches to the study of religious organizations within their local contexts, A Particular Place addresses two types of restructuring that are often mutually implicated but seldom addressed together-urban and religious restructuring. This book demonstrates just how much can be learned from close attention to "a particular place."

Nancy L. Eiesland is assistant professor of the sociology of religion at Candler School of Theology and the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. She is the co-editor of Contemporary American Religion: An Ethnographic Reader.