The union has reoriented towards entrepreneurship: neoliberal solidarities on Zambia’s Copperbelt

McNamara, Thomas

doi:10.1080/01436597.2021.1908827

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Local individuals and institutions took over these social reproductive roles, dispersing their costs through the community. Unions run mine stores, churches increasingly run rotating credit associations, and community organisations provide health and education services (Haynes 2017;McNamara 2021b).…”

Section: Care and Social Reproduction In Zambia's Copper Minesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They share information about possible jobs, loans, investment or business opportunities, and discuss how to juggle debts to survive until the next monthly payday. Manifesting the double-sidedness of care, these support networks are essential to sustaining a precarious workforce, creating a reserve labour pool, and subsidising wages below the cost of living (McNamara 2021b(McNamara , 2153.…”

Section: Workers: Unacknowledged Care In the Hidden Abodementioning

confidence: 99%

“…They also manifest interdependence across these hierarchies, shaped by rather fragile differentiations in wealth based on temporary jobs or access to costly credit. While miners claim to be individuals seeking to 'move' up social 'levels', they do so through relations of care, unpaid communal labour, intra-community resource transfers, and debt (Musonda 2021a;McNamara 2021b;Haynes 2017). In the words of one miner, 'we feel each other's heartbeat' and hence the obligation to care for their co-workers and community members.…”

Section: Workers: Unacknowledged Care In the Hidden Abodementioning

confidence: 99%

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Subsidising Extraction: Care at Work in Zambia's Copper Mines

Lochery,

McNamara,

Musonda

2024

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This article explores the ambivalence of care and its role in sustaining capitalist extraction in Zambia's copper mines. Based on ethnographic research within mines and their encompassing communities, the article documents the caring practices of mineworkers and attempts of trade unionists and managerial staff to counsel and support mineworkers as they navigate exploitative employment conditions. These acts of care are often unacknowledged or trivialised by corporate discourses and top company management. Yet, they are pivotal in maintaining and repairing fragile labour relations and, thereby, production. The article explores the way acts of care support workers but, at the same time, reassert the power of the company and the inevitability of exploitation. Following the deconstruction of paternalist welfare systems in the mining sector, neoliberal investments are buttressed by these caring practices and the wider set of relationships they mobilise within the labour force and the broader community. These acts of care thus subsidise the extraction of Zambia's mineral resources.

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Section: Care and Social Reproduction In Zambia's Copper Minesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Workers: Unacknowledged Care In the Hidden Abodementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Workers: Unacknowledged Care In the Hidden Abodementioning

confidence: 99%

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Subsidising Extraction: Care at Work in Zambia's Copper Mines

Lochery,

McNamara,

Musonda

2024

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“…I bring these insights into conversation with a growing body of anthropological literature examining how civil organizations are co‐opted by the state to ameliorate the effects of its retreat. Ethnographic studies have shown how civil groups such as charitable organizations (Muehlebach 2011; Paley 2001), worker cooperatives and labor unions (McNamara 2021; Shever 2012), and vigilante groups (Goldstein 2005) may mediate, but ultimately enable, neoliberal cuts to state services.…”

Section: Masculinities and The Nationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pyrrhic nationals: The promise and pitfalls of masculine civic belonging in Argentina

McNamara¹

2021

Feminist Anthropology

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In this article I discuss an Argentine workfare program as an entry point to challenge dominant understandings of the relationship between masculinity and the nation‐state. By examining this program as it is enacted in Huerta Maipú, a community farm in the outskirts of Córdoba, Argentina, I explore how materializing nationally appropriate masculinity can impede the realization of the substantive benefits associated with national inclusion. Drawing upon Lauren Berlant's (2011) Cruel Optimism, I develop the concept of Pyrrhic Nationals to describe this dynamic. My argument builds upon a subordinated approach to understanding masculinity which I put into conversation with anthropological analyses of the role of civil society in neoliberal regimes. Even though Huerta Maipú was explicitly constructed as an anti‐market, anti‐capitalist and anti‐patriarchal site, materializing masculinities through social and community activism entailed becoming the exact subjects required by neoliberal projects.

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Coloniality of power and social control strategies in mining: an analysis of MAM activists’ narratives

Lima

Mafra

2022

Third World Quarterly

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The union has reoriented towards entrepreneurship: neoliberal solidarities on Zambia’s Copperbelt

Cited by 9 publications

References 31 publications

Subsidising Extraction: Care at Work in Zambia's Copper Mines

Subsidising Extraction: Care at Work in Zambia's Copper Mines

Pyrrhic nationals: The promise and pitfalls of masculine civic belonging in Argentina

Coloniality of power and social control strategies in mining: an analysis of MAM activists’ narratives

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