Wine, Meaning, and Place: Terroir-Tourism, Concealed Workers, and Contested Space in the Napa Valley

California provides a unique opportunity to investigate how capitalist agriculture shapes the development of different societies. The types of agricultural workers and communities that can or are found in association with agricultural crops in California vary according to historical specificity, location and commodity produced. Production and consumption are closely linked. This linkage between consumption and production is evident in the rapid increase in the production of wine grapes across California as the consumption of wine increases globally. In the Napa Valley, the capital investment in the wine industry is changing the organization of wine grape agriculture and its relationship to labor. I investigate the role of terroir-tourism by examining the interconnection of various sectors of labor: vineyard labor, wine production, and tasting rooms. I argue that wine grape cultivation is a significant factor in shaping both physical and social spaces, society, people and landscapes in the Napa Valley. This dissertation argues that the intensified production (more labor intensive) in premium wine grapes is facilitating the permanent settlement of Mexican farm laborers in the Napa Valley. Through the use of ethnographic accounts this dissertation interrogates the meaning of social interaction in specific spaces between Mexican farm laborers and white actors. This dissertation is theoretically driven by space and examines how power, language, class, race, and knowledge interact in a social setting where the parameters are tightly scripted. An analysis of how space is controlled, relinquished, and contested reveals tangible social and cultural impacts of the wine industry on immigrant farmworkers and local communities.