{"id":5387,"date":"2015-04-29T14:00:16","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T19:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/citings\/?p=5387"},"modified":"2015-10-13T13:17:14","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T18:17:14","slug":"of-microbrews-and-methodists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2015\/04\/29\/of-microbrews-and-methodists\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Microbrews and Methodists"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"There<\/a>
There was a time when Coors was the contraband. Nowadays, Bandit and the Snowman probably haul Surly Furious.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here in Minneapolis, the frozen but lively home of the University of Minnesota and TSP, you can\u2019t throw a rock without hitting a microbrewery. That\u2019s true for most of the northern U.S., but as discussed in the Atlantic<\/a><\/em>, \u201cthe nine states with the fewest breweries are all in the South.\u201d What\u2019s the difference? One sociologist says it\u2019s religion.<\/p>\n

Across the country, big beer companies contribute to candidates who aren\u2019t likely to support policies that enable local breweries to get a foothold. That investment helps curtail competition. In the South, Baptists form an important voting bloc with strong cohesion around social and moral issues, as do Methodists. Together, says Boston University sociologist Nancy Ammerman<\/a>, \u201cthey account for a very large proportion of the population in the South.\u201d Since alcohol is one of the hot-button issues, candidates who keep small breweries from operating gain an extra boost at the ballot box.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, Ammerman points out that, in old Methodists and Baptists communities, payment in whiskey was fairly common. This might explain why independent whiskey distilleries are not as frowned upon as small breweries (and large whiskey companies are less invested in preventing boutique distilleries). Either way, if you\u2019re hoping for a microbrew in Mississippi, you\u2019ll want to road-trip it (humming \u201cEastbound and Down<\/a>\u201d along the way).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Here in Minneapolis, the frozen but lively home of the University of Minnesota and TSP, you can\u2019t throw a rock without hitting a microbrewery. That\u2019s true for most of the northern U.S., but as discussed in the Atlantic, \u201cthe nine states with the fewest breweries are all in the South.\u201d What\u2019s the difference? One […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2027,"featured_media":5388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[212,29612,29613,39112,131,29614,922,42,29615],"class_list":["post-5387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-alcohol","tag-beer","tag-breweries","tag-culture","tag-economy","tag-methodism","tag-money","tag-religion","tag-southern-baptism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/files\/2015\/04\/bandit.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2027"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5387"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5391,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5387\/revisions\/5391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}