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Paper short abstract:

This paper considers how untruth shapes the ethical projects of union members and leaders. Responding to the importance of reflection in creating ethical subjects, I assert the significance of (self)deception in responding to the set-backs and unequal rewards of progressive social movements.

Paper long abstract:

Long Abstract

Like many Global South unions, the Mineworkers Union of Zambia has fragmented into multiple near identical organisations. These unions rarely strike and they are incentivised to cooperate with management and to compete for members by offering workers gifts and financial services. Zambian union leaders increasingly find themselves responding to this disempowerment through obfuscation, self-deception and outright lies. Rather than dismissing their actions as corruption, this paper considers how untruth shapes the personal and collective ethical projects of union members, bureaucrats and leaders. Linking the anthropologies of unionism and bureaucracy, the paper explores how members and bureaucrats co-create public and populist secrecies, which protect unionism's utopian goals and narratives of strength from practices shaped by disempowerment. Responding to works that foreground the importance of reflection in the creation of collective ethical subjects, I assert the significance of (self)deception in responding to the constant set-backs and unequal rewards of progressive social movements.