From Kenya with Love... Agents Shaping the Backbone of a Telecoupled Rose System, 1920–2020

Klara Strecker, Frank C.A. Veraart

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Abstract

This article presents a transnational history of entangled rose trade. Building on notions of sustainability telecoupling, and transnational history literature, it investigates the historical (dis)entanglement process between Kenya and the Netherlands. It aims to go beyond the common supply side focus to tell a story of transnational entanglement that integrates the demand side as well. Along four key time periods, starting in the 1920s, this paper presents the dynamic and complex history of the formation of the Dutch-Kenyan flower system, focusing specifically on actors (dis)entangling activities across time and space. It empathises the non-linearity and dynamic nature of human and non-human agents, revealing how entanglements are constantly renegotiated, leading to diverse and sometimes unexpected feedbacks with (dis)entangling consequences.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)77-104
Number of pages28
JournalICON
Volume28
Issue number1
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2023

Funding

63 Netherlands Royal Library Online Newspaper Archive Delpher: “Martinair haalt bloemen uit Kenia” Algemeen Dagblad, 30 September 1976, accessed June 2023, https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=KBPERS01:002920025:mpeg21:a00228; and “Bloementransport levert grote order op voor Martinair,”Parool,4 October 1976,accessed June 2023, https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=ABCDDD:010840139:mpeg21:a0183. 64 Hortiwise and FlowerWatch B.V,“A Study on the Kenyan-Dutch Horticultural Supply Chain.” According to Tuluzi from the KFC, 40 percent of flowers today are exported on jets carrying tourists, highlighting the significance of developments in mass tourism for the whole system. See “Salvaging the Kenyan Floriculture Industry.” 65 Hortiwise and FlowerWatch B.V., “A Study on the Kenyan-Dutch Horticultural Supply Chain;” Kabiru, “The Social Structure of Cut Flower Industry.” 66 In 1967, the Dutch pesticide importer Hans Zwager, together with Englishmen Charles Hayes and Michael Dunford and financial support from the Commonwealth Development Cooperation (CDC), founded the vegetable farm Oserian. Their plan was to create a luxury tourist resort, which did not work out for a plethora of reasons. Zwager bought the others out of the project to start farming vegetables and eventually branched out into floriculture in 1982.Today Oserian is one of the largest rose producers worldwide. Research of this article is funded by the Department of Industrial Engineering & Sustainable Innovation of Eindhoven University of Technology as part of the project Drivers of ‘Sustainability’ (DOS), in Dutch-African horticulture supply chains, 1960–2020. We would like to thank Janine Glas for her contributions in making the statistical overviews and graphs of the Netherlands–Kenyan trade relations that are used in this article. Furthermore, we would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their encouraging, constructive and useful comments that improved the earlier versions of this article.

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