
Ebook: Agro-industrial Labour in Kenya: Cut Flower Farms and Migrant Workers’ Settlements
Author: Gerda Kuiper
- Tags: Social Sciences, Social Anthropology, Ethnography, Sociology of Work, Social Structure Social Inequality, Women's Studies
- Year: 2019
- Publisher: Springer International Publishing
- Edition: 1st ed.
- Language: English
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This ethnography analyses labour relations within the export-oriented cut flower industry at Lake Naivasha in Kenya. Though this agro-industry has attracted critical attention from journalists and non-governmental organizations, this book is the first comprehensive, social scientific analysis of the industry’s labour arrangements and production processes. Gerda Kuiper here interprets the work on the farms as ‘agro-industrial labour’: a labour system characterized by high levels of discipline and a strict rhythm of work, due to the demands posed by a highly perishable agricultural product. This framework enables the author to draw on insights from a wide range of anthropological and sociological studies on (agro-)industrial wage labour around the globe. This mixed-methods approach, deployed alongside rich ethnographic detail, allows the author to center the flower farm workers in her analysis.