Mining, Violence, and Moral Economy of Care and Debt: Mining Accidents in Former Yugoslavia in the Long 20th Century

Talk by Tanja Petrović (ZRC SAZU) in the SNAKLAB series, organized by the seeFField project in cooperation with IOS Regensburg.

The lecture reconsiders the relationship between mining and violence and discusses violence as historically constitutive of mining as a profession, and generative of mining communities’ social life. Violence is inscribed in the very nature of mining labor, and the history of mining is defined by accidents, disasters, and exposure of bodies and environments to health risks and deterioration.

Based on the analysis of archival and media texts on mining accidents and disasters in Slovenia and other parts of former Yugoslavia during the long 20th century, the lecture argues that the violence that encompasses mining should be understood as part of the social contract between miners and mining communities, on the one hand, and broader society and the state, on the other, and discusses ambiguous moral economy that governs their relationship.