Beyond Cultural Accounts: The Durable Connections between Humans and Beer

Scholars contend actor network theory (ANT) could be an effective framework for analyzing the reproduction of social systems where agency material objects plays a role. By puzzling established explanations “craft” beer’s emergence, this paper seeks to develop such framework. Craft beer offers compelling case, since theories as population ecology and neolocalism only partially explain its emergence. Following ANT, considers development producing across three stages civilizations. First, agricultural is embedded in communities, then becomes disembedded by specialized industrial production. The craft movement “swings back” pendulum. properties court human actors seek embody re-embed production and/or consumption, enabling networks reclaim commodity from corporate control. This analysis contributes ANT’s potential comparatively examining power dynamics between non-human interacting produce systems.