Over the last twenty years, a resurgence of craft food industries occurred across the U.S. Drawing on consumers’ desire for slow/local food craft breweries, traditional butchers, cheesemongers, and bakeries have been popping up in across the United States. These industries are typically found in major urban areas, staffed by middle class, college educated, often white men and sometimes women who view working in these industries as part of an alternative lifestyle existing in opposition to the mainstream emphasis of industrial consumption. Yet this emphasis on urban craft industries obscures th ... More

Over the last twenty years, a resurgence of craft food industries occurred across the U.S. Drawing on consumers’ desire for slow/local food craft breweries, traditional butchers, cheesemongers, and bakeries have been popping up in across the United States. These industries are typically found in major urban areas, staffed by middle class, college educated, often white men and sometimes women who view working in these industries as part of an alternative lifestyle existing in opposition to the mainstream emphasis of industrial consumption. Yet this emphasis on urban craft industries obscures the complex reality behind the craft food movement and the diverse communities that have supported craft and artisanal foods for centuries. Across the Southern U.S. these slow and local foods are a traditional part of daily life, and their continued practice sits at the intersection of financial sustenance, knowledge, and art. Exploring a variety of Southern artisanal foods from Virginia wineries to shrimping in coastal communities and Mississippi tamales, the producers of these foods show how traditional, not necessarily “new” these movements are within the region and the U.S. as a whole. Arguably, it is the diversity of who is central to these products and foodways that render it and the related history invisible to most U.S. consumers.