Assembling flowers and cultivating homes
Subtitle: labor and gender in Colombia
By: Greta Friedemann-Sánchez.
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Lanham, MD
Language: eng
Number of pages: 207
ISBN-13: 9780739109793
Subjects: Cut flower industry -- Colombia.; Women -- Employment -- Colombia.; Sex role -- Colombia.
Description: "Colombia is a major exporter of fresh-cut flowers. As in other global assembly line industries, women constitute a majority of Colombia's floriculture workforce. This ethnographic study explores the links between agro-industrial employment in the context of economic adjustment programs and the individual experience of employment and economic change at the household level. Author Greta Friedemann-Sanchez's challenges the current academic consensus that transnational assembly line industries reinforce patriarchal ideologies of reproduction and the exploitation of women. What from a global perspective may be perceived as exploitation can be seen from the local perspective as an opportunity within the community.

Specifically, the study focuses on how the interrelated factors of formal employment, wage income, property ownership, social capital, and self-esteem articulate with women's resistance to male dominated households and domestic violence. Expertly combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies, Assembling Flowers and Cultivating Homes contributes greatly to the study of gender and power, household economics and structure, and Latin American society."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p.   ) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Flowers in the global assembly line; title: Assembling flowers; title: Disciplined labor, identity, and gender; title: Land, housing, money, and social networks; title: Cultivating homes; title: Epilogue : gendered development.