Producing and Consuming the Craft Beer Movement

Wesley Shumar is a Professor in the Department of Communication at Drexel University. His research is focused on the commodification of culture, the cultural production of value, the transformation of space, time, and communicative interaction through digital technologies, and the social and interactive processes of learning. His work on higher education focuses on the cultural and spatial transformation of American universities within an increasingly consumerist economy. His work on learning focuses on the ways the internet and digital technologies can enhance learning interactions. He is currently exploring the craft economy and the production of value. He is author of College for Sale: A Critique of the Commodification of Higher Education, and Inside Mathforum.org: Analysis of an Online Mathematics Education Community. He is also the co-editor of Structure and Agency in the Neoliberal University and Building Virtual Communities: Learning and Change in Cyberspace. Tyson Mitman is a senior lecturer in Sociology and Criminology at York St John University. His research examines space and culture. Specifically, how culture and space intersect and interact with each other, how we make our lives through the cultural groups and practices we value, and how we position and debate power, identity, and representation though how we construct differing cultural groups and how those groups are differently allowed to use public and private spaces. Much of his research has been about public aesthetics and graffiti culture. It has focused on how individuals who write graffiti construct their identity within their subculture, how their interaction with public space produces a type of political discourse, and how graffiti affects spaces and those who use those spaces. He is the author of The Art of Defiance: Graffiti, Politics, and the Reimagined City in Philadelphia. He cares deeply about craft beer and respects the producers who are driven by a desire to produce the best product they can, not merely the most profitable one. He believes, at its best, craft beer (and most craft production) helps make caring and informed communities who are capable of resisting the corporate mediocrity mass production so often tries to heap onto all of us.

Chapter 1 – Introduction: The Craft Community

Introduction

What Is Craft?

Central Themes

Chapters in the Book

Chapter 2 – Brewing and Doing Ethnography

Introduction

Boundaries

Ethnography

Positivist Science

Counter Narratives and Trends

Theoretical Practice

Limitations

Chapter 3 – History of Craft Beer

Introduction

Imagination

Authenticity

Community

Brewing in the United States

Early Beer History

Post War Mass Culture and Mass Culture Beer

Craft Beer Begins in the United States

Generations

Craft Brewing in Philadelphia

Chapter 4 – Political Economy and Craft Beer

Introduction

From Welfare Capitalism to Neoliberalism

Globalization and the Political Economy of Consumer Capitalism

The Information Revolution

Spatial Transformations

Transformations in Consumer Culture (Taste Revolution)

Craft Beer in Britain: A Comparison

Summary

Chapter 5 – Knowledge Production and Social Reproduction

Introduction

Invisible College

Communities of Practice and Affinity Spaces

Homebrewing

Themes

Summary

Chapter 6 – Digital Media and the Possibility of Craft

Opening Story

Digital Media and Space

Production/Distribution/Consumption

Summary

Chapter 7 – Values and Value Production

Opening Story

Craft

Authenticity Again

Value and Values

Beer Labels

From Being to Becoming

Conclusion

Chapter 8 – Blurring the Edges: Craft Beer’s Limitations

Introduction

Craft Beer and Alcoholism

White Male Culture of Homebrewing and Craft Brewing

Craft Beer and Race

Craft Beer and Gender

Summary

Chapter 9 – Conclusion

Quality over Mass Consumption

Community and Authenticity

Generations

Digital Media

Current Tensions

Final Thoughts