“Building Hoptopia” is a compelling, relevant story about a little-known community whose work has become a major part of America’s culture and economy. I identify a geographic region whose complex history most standard accounts of U.S. history neglect, and in studying it, I deploy rich veins of scholarship on work, immigration, agriculture, industrial and labor relations. My project analyzes the indigenous, immigrant, and U.S.-born workers who planted, tended, and harvested hops in the Pacific Northwest of the United States from the 1860s to contemporary times. Particular emphasis is placed on Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. The Pacific Northwest's hop fields put the region in the national and international spotlight from the 1870s on and cultivated its reputation as the hop—and later craft beer—capital of the world. This reputation continues to shape the Northwest in profound ways. The irony is that few people are aware of the beer industry’s labor history.
This is a labor history of a neglected field in agriculture that aggregated a very diverse labor force from its beginnings. This diversity often created tensions among workers, employers, and residents, especially in times of economic downturn. My project illuminates both the diversity and mobility of this work force in the Pacific Northwest by examining the hop-picking cultures that prevailed over a century and helped fuel America’s beer industry. Seasonal labor forces, corporate expansion, labor unions, environmental factors, cultural tension, various ethnic groups, and issues of commerce and social policy all come to life here.
I seek to put this case study in dialogue with ongoing debates about labor, immigration, mobility, exclusion, and race—all of which are especially hot button issues in the present. *In addition to this paper proposal, I wish to be considered for a poster presentation.