Mapping Consumption’s Consequences: Using GIS to Chart Wisconsin’s 19th Century Hopyards During the Lager Revolution

• In Event: 30661 - Section on Sociology of Consumers and Consumption Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1. Production of taste

Abstract

The study of consumption understandably tends to focus on the end product, as well as the patterns of tastes for particular goods. Here, however, we turn our attention to the raw materials that make consumption possible—in this case, the hop fields and hop growers in 19th century Wisconsin that supplied bale after bale of hops to the busy breweries of Milwaukee and other cities of the day. We take our cue from scholars like Bowen (2015), Clifford (2021), Cronon (1992), Desoucey (2016), and MacFadyen (2018) to more closely examine the rural landscapes that produce rural and urban commodities. We examine the era when Pabst, Blatz, Schlitz and the other great breweries whose names still resonate today began to produce unprecedented quantities of beer in general and lighter, crisper lager in particular for an ever-growing number of beer drinkers. Using a novel dataset of more than three thousand hop farmers and an innovative set of maps, we identify both the demographics and the topography of the hop production that made beer production possible in the first place. The use of the agricultural census, the population census, GIS, and an open-source tool called AllMaps has allowed us to identify the demographics of the farmers fueling the rapidly growing beer industry, and the striking geographic concentration of hop growers clustered in specific townships and across county borders, as well as the effect of this industry on the environment. Our technique provides a theoretical model and methodological tools for studying the social and physical landscapes that underly consumer culture, far beyond hops, Wisconsin, and the 19th century.

Authors

• Jennifer A. Jordan, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

• Vijaya Tamla Rai, Montana State University