
Roses from Kenya
Labor, Environment, and the Global Trade InCut Flowers
Megan A. Styles(Author)
University of Washington Press
Published on 10. December 2019
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-0-295-74650-0 (ISBN)
Description
Honorable Mention for the Society for the Anthropology of Work (SAW) Book prize
The potential of floriculture grows at Lake Naivasha
Kenya supplies more than 35 percent of the fresh-cut roses and other flowers sold annually in the European Union. This industry-which employs at least 90,000 workers, most of whom are women-is lucrative but enduringly controversial. More than half the flowers are grown near the shores of Lake Naivasha, a freshwater lake northwest of Nairobi recognized as a Ramsar site, a wetland of international importance. Critics decry the environmental side effects of floriculture, and human rights activists demand better wages and living conditions for workers.
In this rich portrait of Kenyan floriculture, Megan Styles presents the point of view of local workers and investigates how the industry shapes Kenyan livelihoods, landscapes, and politics. She investigates the experiences and perspectives of low-wage farmworkers and the more elite actors whose lives revolve around floriculture, including farm managers and owners, Kenyan officials, and the human rights and environmental activists advocating for reform. By exploring these perspectives together, Styles reveals the complex and contradictory ways that rose farming shapes contemporary Kenya. She also shows how the rose industry connects Kenya to the world, and how Kenyan actors perceive these connections. As a key space of encounter, Lake Naivasha is a synergistic center where many actors seek to solve broader Kenyan social and environmental problems using the global flows of people, information, and money generated by floriculture.
The potential of floriculture grows at Lake Naivasha
Kenya supplies more than 35 percent of the fresh-cut roses and other flowers sold annually in the European Union. This industry-which employs at least 90,000 workers, most of whom are women-is lucrative but enduringly controversial. More than half the flowers are grown near the shores of Lake Naivasha, a freshwater lake northwest of Nairobi recognized as a Ramsar site, a wetland of international importance. Critics decry the environmental side effects of floriculture, and human rights activists demand better wages and living conditions for workers.
In this rich portrait of Kenyan floriculture, Megan Styles presents the point of view of local workers and investigates how the industry shapes Kenyan livelihoods, landscapes, and politics. She investigates the experiences and perspectives of low-wage farmworkers and the more elite actors whose lives revolve around floriculture, including farm managers and owners, Kenyan officials, and the human rights and environmental activists advocating for reform. By exploring these perspectives together, Styles reveals the complex and contradictory ways that rose farming shapes contemporary Kenya. She also shows how the rose industry connects Kenya to the world, and how Kenyan actors perceive these connections. As a key space of encounter, Lake Naivasha is a synergistic center where many actors seek to solve broader Kenyan social and environmental problems using the global flows of people, information, and money generated by floriculture.
Reviews / Votes
"In addition to an exploration of controversial labor practices, the book is also about a lake and the confluence of wildlife, commerce, power and politics surrounding it. . . . Styles' book helps contextualize the labor that goes into a gift many will receive."(Illinois Times) "Styles has produced an insightful work filled with evocative analysis."
(H-Net) "Styles' vivid ethnographic descrip-tions draw attention to the myriad local contestations refashioned and created by?oriculture. This approach enables the reader to not only learn about the problem-atic sides of?ower production in Kenya but to also get to know Naivasha as a site of possibility that has an important place in political and moral imaginations."
(The Journal of Modern African Studies) "Styles succeeds in conveying the complexities and contradictions of global commodity production: work in floriculture, in spite of the possibilities it affords, is no bed of roses."
(Exertions)
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Seattle
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
7 b&w illus., 1 map, 2 charts
Dimensions
Height: 228 mm
Width: 151 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
352 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-295-74650-0 (9780295746500)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
12/2019
1st Edition
University of Washington Press
from
€84.99
Available for download
Persons
Megan A. Styles is assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Illinois Springfield.