Selling White Masculinity: An Analysis of Cultural Intermediaries in the Craft Beverage Industry

The purpose of this study is to use the craft beverage industry as a case study in which to investigate how white masculinity is reproduced within consumer spaces. This study explores the roles that cultural intermediaries in the craft beverage industry play in the reproduction and contestation of white masculinity. Cultural intermediaries can be understood as tastemakers who play a large role in assigning value and legitimacy to products, practices and people within consumer industries. Intermediaries such as marketing and advertising firms, industry writers, and critics have been widely studied in the past. However, the day to day interactional work that many cultural intermediaries do has gone understudied. I use in-depth/semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observations with 32 craft beer, specialty wine, and craft spirits sales people, marketers, and event specialists. I find that through the creation of spaces, marketing and selling of products, and modes of self presentation, cultural intermediaries in the craft beverage industry center and normalize white masculinity by using it to add value and legitimacy to their products, practices, and themselves. This work contributes to the understanding of how racial, ethnic, and gendered inequalities can act as a form of currency that consumer markets trade in and structure the seemingly mundane and benign corners of our everyday lives