Craft beer landscapes of the American South : an examination of cultural economy and identity production

The cultural and geographic diversity of the American South provides a unique case to investigate how Whiteness is anchored in the social and physical infrastructure of the craft beer industry. As a byproduct of critiques of Whiteness in the broader industry, a regional study is an opportunity to understand and suggest interventions in underlying and explicit tones of exclusion and displacement weaved into the fabric of the craft. Through the lens of the production of culture and transactions within a racialized cultural economy, this study engages with how craft beer and breweries are media where cultural capital is inequitably exchanged and distributed through three connected manuscripts. The first manuscript utilizes craft beer names and imagery across five Southeast states to capture Southern themes and identity. This study is designed to extend our understanding of how place-branding can inform craft beer consumption or lack thereof. The second manuscript lays the groundwork for understanding the relationship between brewery locations and race-based residential distribution across three Southeast United States cities. The third manuscript links how the clustering of breweries in acknowledged brewery districts aid in constructing and sustaining a racialized cultural economy within the industry. A narrative is built through the consumer-centered methodology of a series of site observations and interviews. The dissertation yield results that contribute to ongoing transdisciplinary cultural economy of craft beer discourse, and spatial- and marketing-based placemaking framework at the nexus of urban, cultural, and economic geographies