Crafting an identity: value, practice, and the making of a craft beer community in San Antonio, Texas

This thesis answers the questions of whether a craft beer-based community exists in San Antonio, Texas, and what the characteristics of this community are. I answer these questions using a theoretical framework consisting of ideas of production and consumption (Miller 2012), identity (Bourdieu 1984), value (Graeber 2001), social movements and shared identities (Jasper & Polletta 2001). Over the course of two months of field work in four sites, I was able to ascertain that San Antonio has a local community by meeting four criteria: distinctive, small, homogenous, and self-sufficient (Redfield 1955). This community is constructed around a value-based identity that is grounded in the production and consumption of craft beer. I identified the values of San Antonio's craft beer community through ethnographic interviewing, and I analyzed the practices in which those values are manifest through participant-observation fieldwork.