Greta Friedemann-Sánchez. Assembling flowers and cultivating homes: labor and gender in Colombia (Review)

In recent years the cut-flower industry has been at the center of debates surrounding the perils and promises of globalization. On the one hand, the employment opportunities and income potential generated by the industry have rendered it a palliative for poverty and fiscal crises in several Southern countries. On the other hand, allegations of pesticide poisoning, sweatshop conditions, and environmental damage have tarnished its feted economic success. Anthropologist Greta Friedemann-Sanchez’s detailed analysis of gender and labor relations in Colombia’s cut-flower industry presents a decidedly different spin on this familiar dichotomy. By tracing the effects of women’s agro-industrial employment on intrahousehold dynamics, she creates a nuanced account of how economic adjustment and neoliberal policies are mediated by on-the-ground cultural and economic processes. This will be a welcome resource for scholars and policy-makers seeking empirical evidence to answer the questions: Does employment in non-traditional export sectors reinforce or destabilize patriarchal relations of reproduction? Does this employment enhance women’s power and decisionmaking or harness them to low-wage, unskilled work under deleterious conditions?