Abstract
Since the first craft breweries opened over forty years ago, craft beer has been entangled with notions of localism, authenticity, and scenes. In a time when consumers are seeking out local products and shopping small more and more, it should come as no surprise that the craft beer industry is thriving. With over 8,000 independently owned craft breweries operating in the United States, taprooms in every state welcome locals and tourists alike to sample an ever-changing assortment of skillfully crafted beer. Craft beer seems to be everywhere these days. Well, maybe not everywhere?
Las Vegas is famous—or perhaps infamous—for bright lights, world-class shopping, fine dining, stage shows, endless buffets, and a host of other indulgences that have become trademarks of the city. Las Vegas seemingly has everything one could ever want—except for craft beer. In Vegas Brews: Craft Beer and the Birth of a Local Scene, Michael Ian Borer heads off the strip in search of craft beer. Through participant observation and in-depth interviews with distributors, brewers, brewery employees, and craft enthusiasts, Borer brings you “to the places where the scene happens, where actors—from the leads to the supporting cast—take the stage to make the scene happen” (p. 32).
Vegas Brews begins at the grand opening of Bad Beat Brewing, a new brewery in the “soon-to-be-anointed Artisan Booze District,” an industrial park off the strip (p. 1). Borer’s “thick description” of the event transports you to the taproom among the herd of anxious craft beer enthusiasts as well as local residents who are excited to have something to call their own—something that is just for them. As an ethnographer, Borer describes himself as a “professional listener,” one of those who, in recognizing the strengths and limitations of the method, “set out to describe and interpret the experiences that define and depend on a local scene joined together by a particular cultural object” (p. 22).
Scenes and communities are different sociological concepts but are often used interchangeably. Borer is keenly aware of the distinction between the two concepts, noting that the term “community” is a “historically imprecise term that is a proxy for both small groups and global populations” and that there are other “ways and forms in which people congregate to combat the forces of alienation” (pp. 22–23). The term “community” describes a feeling of belonging, a shared purpose, a feeling of solidarity. Members of groups and scenes most certainly experience a sense of community, but the term is inadequate when attempting to understand the nuances of human interaction, shared and ritualistic activity, production of expressive symbols, and symbolic boundary maintenance. The term “scene” fits the Las Vegas craft beer industry well. In Borer’s words, the term “scene” “provides a way to identify a collection of diverse people, places, and things devoted to or at least connected to a similar aesthetic disposition” (p. 24). Building on the existing literature on scenes, Borer describes the three components that make up the Las Vegas craft beer scene: scenes are expressive, scenes are voluntary, and scenes are publicly available.
The book is organized into six substantive chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion, along with extensive footnotes and appendixes. Chapter One, “Once upon a Beer Desert,” sets the stage for the emergence of the craft beer scene by playing off the notion of the “food desert” and examining the locals’ image of what Las Vegas means to them. Borer notes that for those who participate in the craft beer scene, “the Strip . . . often plays the role of the villain” (p. 42). Scenes can emerge as forms of resistance, and, Borer suggests, the craft beer scene is a product of their collective resistance to the popular image of Las Vegas. Indeed, Borer asserts, “for those within the scene, craft is an antidote to Las Vegas Syndrome” (p. 43).
Chapter Two, “Not-so-Neon Terroir,” and Chapter Three, “Think Globally, Drink Locally,” are focused on issues of localism, trans-localism, cultural taste, cultural capital, and authenticity. In Chapter Two, Borer vividly describes rare bottle shares, where participants bring newly acquired or perhaps cellared rare beers to share with other enthusiasts. Chapter Three dives more deeply into the connections between local scenes and trans-local scenes.
Building on the previous chapters, Chapter Four, “Fussing Over Status,” engages with the ways status is conferred and how elite participants can maintain the symbolic boundaries of a scene. Borer also examines the way non-participant locals view those in the craft beer scene as “fussing” over their beer. This chapter adds much-needed insight into our understanding of how cultural capital works in scenes, particularly in a scene that revolves around a beverage.
Chapter Five, “#craftbeer,” examines the role of social media in “hyping up” breweries, trading beer online, and other virtual scene interactions. Chapter Six, “Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beer Holder,” provides an overview of how tastes and aesthetics can change. In the conclusion, Borer, against the backdrop of the still very fresh Las Vegas shooting of 2017, describes how the scene came together to help, heal, and unite their city. Borer details the brewing of a collaborative beer called “Vegas Strong Ale,” which was brewed by several local breweries and used local ingredients. It is in this example that we can see, as Borer intends in the introduction, what a scene is and how a scene works. We can feel the sense of community felt by those affected by the tragedy, but also, importantly, we can see the ways people come together around a common shared object—craft beer—and how that can reflect a much larger and deeper connection between people in a city like Las Vegas.
While the book does an excellent job outlining the formation of a scene, it lacks critical engagement in other areas, particularly the areas of race and gender. Borer and his interviewees adopt the stance that beer is genderless and does not possess an inherent gender, nor is it bound by socially constructed gender norms. Beer itself may be genderless, but the interactions and processes involved in producing and consuming craft beer are very much gendered and racialized. It would only strengthen the book to include more contemporary scholarship about craft beer, race, and gender. Additionally, Borer does not engage with much, if any, of the contemporary literature on craft beer. The field is small and certainly growing, but there are several seminal works that deserve mention. Again, this does not take away from the book overall; however, it places the book in a more generalist category and leaves the trained sociologist or graduate student wanting a bit more discussion and engagement with more critical analyses.
The body of scholarship on craft beer is still rather new. Previous research has focused on a number of aspects of craft beer production and consumption, including critical engagement with more classical sociological issues such as race, class, gender, and intersectionality, as well as organizational and meso-level analyses within the sociology of work. What has been missing from the literature is an engagement and understanding of how craft beer functions in building community, how it is tied to notions of localism, and how the craft beer culture manifests itself in a scene. In Vegas Brews, Borer begins to fill in these theoretical holes by providing craft beer scholars—and craft enthusiasts—with a case study of how a scene forms, the way tastes are shaped, the way cultural products are produced, and an understanding of how scenes are bound by feelings of solidarity and are deeply tied to the local.