Beer in the United States has always been bound up with race, racism, and the construction of white institutions and identities.
Given the very quick rise of craft beer, as well as the myopic scholarly focus on economic and historical trends in the field, there is an urgent need to take stock of the intersectional inequalities that such realities gloss over.
This unique book carves a much-needed critical and interdisciplinary path to examine and understand the racial dynamics in the craft beer industry and the popular consumption of beer.
Alcohol consumption is frequently described as a contemporary, worsening and peculiarly British social problem that requires radical remedial regulation. Informed by historical research and sociological analysis, this book takes an innovative and refreshing look at how public attitudes and the regulation of alcohol have developed through time. It argues that, rather than a response to trends in consumption or harm, ongoing anxieties about alcohol are best understood as ‘hangovers’ derived, in particular, from the Victorian period. The product of several years of research, this book aims to help readers re-evaluate their understandings of drinking. As such, it is essential reading for students, academics and anyone with a serious interest in Britain’s ‘drink problem’.
This book critically explores the urban governance of healthy lifestyles and the contemporary problematisations of the obesity, sedentarism and alcohol “epidemics". To do so, it uses US and UK case studies to shed light on the complex socio-spatial dynamics of responsibilities for health and argues for an engagement with the construct of “sensible" behaviour at a time of its rising political salience. This book will appeal to sociologists, geographers, anthropologists and those concerned with the governance of health and lifestyle.
‘Behaviour change’ has become a buzz phrase of growing importance to policymakers and researchers. There is an increasing focus on exploring the relationship between social organisation and individual action, and on intervening to influence societal outcomes like population health and climate change. Researchers continue to grapple with methodologies, intervention strategies and ideologies around ‘social change’.
Multidisciplinary in approach, this important book draws together insights from a selection of the principal thinkers in fields including public health, transport, marketing, sustainability and technology. The book explores the political and historical landscape of behaviour change, and trends in academic theory, before examining new innovations in both practice and research. It will be a valuable resource for academics, policy makers, practitioners, researchers and students wanting to locate their thinking within this rapidly evolving field.
Issues relating to alcohol ‘misuse’ can only properly be understood within their social and environmental contexts. This research and practice based book explores social models of alcohol misuse to offer a sociological approach to its treatment.
Through considering the social meaning of women’s alcohol use, the book challenges current policy and practice in the field. It raises concerns about the political role of ‘treatment’ in making women behave, or to be ‘well’, and aims to develop a new approach to women’s drinking and new ways of aiding recovery, at national and local levels.
With contributions from service users, academics and practitioners, this is essential reading for those studying addiction, gender and the social background to alcohol problems.
Industry representation We have seen that exposure to beer, access to jobs in the beer and restaurant industries, access to a craft beer scene, and homebrewing, all undergirded by the fundamental power of social networks, are the most common pathways to becoming a brewer and a consumer. These social structures are classed, gendered, and raced, leading to a fundamental lack of diversity. We want to look more closely at how the lack of diversity and representation in the industry has led to the systematic exclusion of black people from beer consumption. One
This chapter evaluates the ways in which craft beer has reshaped spaces, places, and cultures in the image of white people, whiteness, and white supremacy. Craft beer spaces and places are typically located in gentrified areas, which have become signifiers of gentrification and middle-class consumption. The chapter then argues that craft breweries socially and culturally construct authentic identities that reflect middle-class values. It also explores the ways in which gentrification and craft beer are entangled, and the processes whereby such beer gentrification leads to the creation of 'white spaces.' Using interview data, the chapter examines how these spaces discourage and exclude black people and other minorities from participating in craft beer cultures, and therefore its consumption.
This chapter stretches from the 1920s to the 1960s, during which time the public profile of the ‘drink problem’ was relatively low and traditional constraints on lifestyle and pleasure began to be challenged. As evangelicalism declined and welfarist forms of government expanded, public alarm about drinking lessened somewhat and beer consumption even became seen aspartly positive during World War Two. So was this an age of permissiveness? This chapter explains that, despite these changes shifts in the contours of the ‘drink problem’, phenomena such as youth drinking and drink-driving were heavily censured in law and public discourse. So, efforts to morally regulate drinking were not abandoned during this period but revised.
capital. Like other white spaces, breweries discourage black consumption of craft beer and discourage black participation in craft beer culture. Throughout this book, we have demonstrated the importance of exposure to, access to, and knowledge about craft beer. Indeed, our interview respondents also contend that exposure to craft beer is one of the largest barriers in preventing and excluding black people from craft beer consumption. As the Brewers Association reported in their annual address, the craft beer industry has a diversity problem. In the following sections
) and brewpubs (34.8 per cent) (Brewers Association, 2019a ). The beer produced by the almost 8,000 total US breweries is distributing to a broader spectrum of outlets than ever before (NBWA, 2019a ). Ultimately, the consumption of beer and craft beer is at an all-time high, capturing some 49 per cent of alcohol consumption, with the proportion of craft beer consumption growing the fastest within total beer consumption (BI, 2019 ). Craft beer has centrally established itself within the US brewing landscape within a fairly short period of time and is becoming an
