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º£½ÇÉçÇøsociology professor Jeffrey Parker, whose research interests include studying neighborhoods, place reputation and gentrification, has been awarded a $211,309 grant from the National Science Foundation.

As an urban sociologist, Parker is broadly interested in issues of place reputation at the level of neighborhood, city, and region. More specifically, his work focuses on how perceptions of place structure action and inequality.

Parker’s latest research examines the branding—or rebranding of—Atlanta, Georgia, and the role of merchants as the city attempted to shed the American South’s regional reputation for racism and parochialism.

The goal of the project is to better understand the interconnections among region, reputation and capitalism, specifically by examining the role of merchants in the reputational life of Atlanta.

The American South has a historical and contemporary reputation for racism. Businesses are important nexuses of this reputation as both sites of historical racial exclusion and sources of contemporary opposition to attacks on civil rights, Parker said. This intersection of reputation, race and capitalism is particularly visible in Atlanta, currently and historically, he said.

Parker’s research, conducted using in-person interviews and archival materials, will focus heavily on the time period between the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s and the present.

While in residence at the Urban Studies Institute at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Parker will collaborate with Deirdre Oakley, a sociology professor at Georgia State University.