This interdisciplinary volume provides a comprehensive and rich analysis of the century-long socio-ecological transformation of Lake Naivasha, Kenya. Major globalised processes of agricultural intensification, biodiversity conservation efforts, and natural-resource extraction have simultaneously manifested themselves in this one location.
These processes have roots in the colonial period and have intensified in the past decades, after the establishment of the cut-flower industry and the geothermal-energy industry. The chapters in this volume exemplify the multiple, intertwined socio-environmental crises that consequently have played out in Naivasha in the past and the present, and that continue to shape its future.
Gerda Kuiper is a cultural anthropologist based at the University of Cologne. Her PhD, from the same university, resulted in multiple publications, including the monograph Agro-industrial Labor in Kenya. Cut Flower Farms and Migrant Workers' Settlements (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
Eric Kioko (PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology, 2016, Universiy of Cologne) is a lecturer at Kenyatta University. He has published in journals such as Africa, Africa Spectrum and The European Journal of Development Research.
Michael Bollig is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne. He has published widely on the environmental anthropology of Sub-Saharan Africa and co-edited the volumes Resilience and Collapse in African Savannahs (2017) and African Futures (2022).
The book speaks to a large interdisciplinary audience interested in the broad topic of socio-ecological change, both individual researchers and university libraries (e.g. anthropology, geography, area studies, and environmental sciences).
