Modus Hoperandi: A Critical Agrarian Study of Hop Production in Sweden and Exploration of Localized Hop Production in the Scandinavian Context

Sammanfattning: Using a critical agrarian studies approach, this study focuses on the history and current context of hop production in Sweden and adjoining parts of Scandinavia as a case study illustrating how land-use changes and the paradigm shift towards globalized agri-food systems has tended to marginalize traditional crop production as well as how completely new forms of hop production are able to practically confront the capitalist logic of globalized agriculture. This study explores class relationships, land-use changes, and the paradigm shift towards globalized agri-food systems to explain Sweden’s reliance upon foreign production systems to satisfy its growing hop consumption, despite centuries of domestic hop production. Economic localization – the production, distribution, and consumption of a commodity within a community – is explored as an approach that counters the capitalist logic of globalized hop trade. This is done through fieldwork conducted at Byhumle, a radical urban hop farm in Copenhagen, Denmark. The result of this research was a critical agrarian history of hop production in Sweden, which demonstrated that its decline was facilitated by land enclosures, the depopulation of the peasantry, and the corporatization of global hop production, despite centuries of royal mandates. Furthermore, Byhumle was shown to be a considerable example of economic localization as praxis.