Heading down to the local? Australian rural development and the evolving spatiality of the craft beer sector

Abstract

Rural geographical and regional development scholarship over the past two decades has increasingly focused on the capacities of local towns and regions to overcome chronic spirals of employment, business and demographic decline. In this context, this paper assesses the local development impacts of a once ubiquitous industry in rural Australia - beer brewing. Via a case study of 16 rural Australian craft breweries, the paper examines the factors underlying their establishment, and investigates the contribution that these new firms make to local and regional development. Applying evolutionary economic geography concepts such as place dependence and lock-in, and related ideas of embeddedness and 'regulatory space', the paper finds that the 16 brewers follow a variety of business models and most are small scale producers. For most, place dependence manifested as a form of embeddedness, reflected in their attachment to place, a desire to foster local and regional development and, for a minority, to create beers from local ingredients as far as possible. Evidence from the case study reported on in this paper suggests that local craft breweries are playing positive roles in engendering social, symbolic and, to a lesser extent, financial capital in their home towns and regions.