HEART & MATTER: FERMENTATION IN A TIME OF CRISIS Aaron C. Delgaty A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the department of Anthropology. Chapel Hill 2020 Approved by: Christopher T. Nelson Margaret J. Wiener Peter Redfield Townsend Middleton Brad Weiss © 2020 Aaron C. Delgaty ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Aaron C. Delgaty: Heart & Matter: Fermentation in a Time of Crisis (Under the direction of Christopher T. Nelson) In Heart & Matter, I explore contemporary artisan movements from the perspectives of the artisans that animate these movements, considering how people draw on this emergent category of alternate labor and identity to navigate crises of social, economic, and personal precariousness within the artisan industry. Moving from North Carolina to Okinawa, Tokyo to Chicago, my collaborators shared the quotidian anxiety of how to keep their crafts - and the businesses, livelihoods, and identities tied up in those crafts – relevant, viable, and even successful. Toward survival, my interlocutors engaged in practices of resilience, innovation, and collaboration, elemental threads that wove their working philosophies of craft. At the visceral intersection of ethnography and apprenticeship, I trace a working ethos of emergent artisanship that captures the hopes and anxieties, the successes and failures, the everyday lives and works of craftspeople confronting uncertain frontiers of vocation and taste. By way of introduction, Every Scar a Lesson outlines and demonstrates my primary methodology, an itinerant series of participant observations from the perspective of formal and informal apprenticeship, or what I call a wandering apprenticeship. Storms Within, Storms Without examines the resilience crucial to meeting and overcoming the difficulties of craft livelihoods. Despite the ease many associate with industry (even some of those within the industry), being a craftsperson is not easy. The ups and downs of a craft livelihood can be overwhelming, and I trace some of the strategies – ethical or otherwise - craftspeople use to iii resist defeat. Fortune and Glory contemplates the fickleness of innovation. I discuss the environmentally contingent, cooperative nature of creativity and the possibilities and limitations such a nature enacts. I consider the value innovation can bring to a craft venture, and also the potential consequences to business and craftsperson when the well of innovation runs dry. Ouroboros explores the phenomenon of collaboration, touching on the practice of collaborative production, the communal ethos among craftspeople, and the broader concerns of working with and within a community. This chapter reflects both on the creative potential of the craft community, and on its pressures. iv For Lauren & Elsie An artisan’s heart flourishes in the comfort of a loving home. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation, like the craft labors it follows, was made possible by the collaboration of many. My deepest gratitude to Chris Nelson, my dissertation advisor, who’s invitation to UNC launched this, and whose support, patience, insight, and interest as a mentor has shaped this project and left an indelible mark on me as an anthropologist and artisan. My sincere appreciation to my committee members, Margaret Wiener, Peter Redfield, Townsend Middleton, and Brad Weiss, for generously lending your expertise, for helping smooth the rough edges and fill the gaps of this work, and for seeing promise when I could not. Thank you to the professors, fellow graduate students, and support staff of UNC’s Anthropology Department: Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld, Jocelyn Chua, Paul Leslie, Gabby Purcell, Katie Barrett, Chu-Wen Hsieh, Paul Schissel, Sora Enomoto, Dayuma Alban, Bryan Dougan, Eric Thomas, Katie Poor, and Irina Olenicheva. I could not have asked for a warmer community or greater friends. Thank you as well to my professors and colleagues from UT Austin: Robert Oppenheim, John Traphagan, Heather Hindman, Ben Miller, and Erin Newton. While not directly involved in this project, our time together helped establish the intellectual and methodological foundation on which this book is built. This project would not have been possible without the generosity of the artisans who opened their doors to me. A special thanks to my mentors who taught me to brew, distill, and craft cheese, who put up with my peculiar questions and itinerant lifestyle. While I won’t specify names for the sake of anonymity, working and learning alongside you gave me the vi opportunity to become an artisan in my own right. Thank you to the many farmers, distributors, businesses owners, bartenders, and customers who at various times created connections and shared their insights. Thank you as well to the reviewers and staff of the Japan Foundation for funding and facilitating this project. My appreciation, love, and respect to my family. Thank you to my parents, Cheri, Ron, Larry, Carol, and Larry, who furnished hearth and home through the many ups and downs of this project. A special thank you to my dad for always being my first reader, steadfast editor, and ardent supporter. Thank you to Kenny Porter, my best friend and fellow writer, for being a model of resilience. Laughing and commiserating with you has been an unfailing source of strength. While so many have supported me throughout this adventure, only one has been my partner. Lauren, your fearless optimism has seen me through this journey’s many storms. Thank you for always reminding me of who I am, where I’ve been, and where I’m going. You are the best part of me. And finally, to Elsie, my brave, precocious, beautiful little girl. From the first time I saw you, the first time I held you, from your first smile, your first tantrum, for every giggle and tiny handhold, and for all the nights spent dozing on my chest while I wrote this, you have been - and continue every day to be - my inspiration. You are my heart. vii AUTHOR’S FOREWORD – A WANDERING APPRENTICESHIP I came to this book by way of a brewery. In 2012, I traveled to the coast of Japan’s northeastern Tōhoku region to survey the local recovery efforts following the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. I was working with a small inland Buddhist temple, observing and assisting in the funeral rituals it carried out for its increasingly gray community. I had come to Tōhoku to study the aftermath of the tripartite disaster, but found myself engrossed in a much slower burning, if related, crisis: the gradual depopulation of rural Japan, and the quiet struggle of rural institutions like community temples to mitigate the social and emotional fallout of empty houses and broken families. Even so, I occasionally made my way east in search of my original interests. It was a muggy July day on the bus into Miyako City. I was part of a tour group of mostly elderly pensioners bound for a memorial service further up the coast. Despite the solemnity of our purpose, there was still time for a little sightseeing of the ravaged coastline, a form of dark tourism that popped up with the aftershocks. The seaside was a vacant expanse of overgrown foundations interrupted only by an impromptu general store and a handful of shacks erected by residents who refused to abandon their property. Among the skeletal remains of former residences and businesses was a saké brewery, a lone brick warehouse left standing following the wave. A desiccated brown sakabayashi (a bundle of cedar needles) hung above the main entrance announcing the end of the brewing cycle. This month was the brewery’s first vintage since the disaster. viii Standing within the brewhouse, the owners – a middle-aged couple – pointed out the scars of the past year’s trauma; discolored bricks marking the flood line, a snaking crack through a supporting wall, a fifteen-foot stainless steel fermentation vessel lying in a crumpled heap in the far corner where the wave left it. The owners stood next to a pallet of freshly packed boxes, handing out samples and selling bottles to the tour group. The spirit tasted like sake, nothing particularly remarkable. But perhaps that’s what was remarkable about it. Despite all the tragedy, the human cost, the upheaval of the landscape and everyday life, people could still make saké that tasted like saké. To those tasting the unblemished spirit, the brewery stood as an icon of local resilience. “Yoku ganbarimashita,” one gruff elderly man told the owners, “you did well.” For the owners, I imagine the bottles arranged on the shipping floor and the money exchanging hands served as tangible indicators of personal recovery, of hope. The brewery, though still bound to the disaster through memories and scars that would only partially fade, was nevertheless moving forward. That unexpected trip to a brewery reframed my work at the temple, and ultimately pitched the curiosity that would ferment into the elemental questions of this project: How can the pressures of crisis viscerally manifest in everyday life? How do people cultivate the resilience to weather these crises? How do people adept in specialized forms of labor – brewers and priests, distillers and cheesemakers - use the material and philosophical dimensions of their practice to work through the crises in their lives and communities? Unexpectedly, pulling this thread ultimately led me to another brewery. Brewers build their practice from the recipes and techniques of those that came before them.