Exploring meaning in craft beer communities: what is craft beer and who is it for?

Despite the difficulty of conceptualising the term, the emergence of Craft Beer as a distinct and growing segment in the shrinking beer market marks it out as a phenomenon of sociological interest in its own right. This thesis uses ethnographic research to examine the material and semiotic values that differentiate Craft Beer from other kinds of beer. It employs netnographic methods to explore Craft Beer communities based on Facebook to show how humour is used to construct and police the symbolic boundaries that define Craft Beer by producers, consumers and cultural intermediaries. Autoethnographic methods are used to highlight the differences between emplaced communities in ‘traditional’ pubs and bars and their more mobile, taste-based counterparts which form around Craft Beer. Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, misrecognition and rehabilitation (1984) are used to highlight the class-based nature of Craft Beer consumption, drawing together the specific qualities associated with Craft Beer to argue that the imbrication of procedural, material, geographical, temporal, oppositional and biographical modes of authenticity (Thurnell-Read, 2019) results in the emergence a distinctive conception of Craft Beer via the positional narratives that Craft Brewers create and which the wider Craft Beer scene validates through consumption both of the beer itself and its accompanying memes. These narratives incorporate biographically authentic details of those who make and consume Craft Beer, particularly around the themes of oppositional authenticity, collaboration and innovation, which pervade those narratives. Together this thesis synthesises a conception of Craft Beer specific to British Craft Beer communities on and offline during the period of the project’s undertaking. This thesis contributes to the growing body of literature which explores the sensory aspects of Craft Beer consumption, concluding that whether these interactions occur online or in person, Craft Beer offers a meaningful way for individuals to create connections which vivify the communities which form around this central object.