Violent Work, Work of Violence. Entangled Histories of Mining and Violence

The lecture reconsiders the relationship between mining and violence and discusses violence as historically constitutive of mining as a profession, generative of mining communities’ social life as well as of miners’ political subjectivities and collectivities. Violence is inscribed in the very nature of mining labor, and the history of mining is defined by accidents, disasters, and the exposure of bodies and environments to health risks and deterioration—though these are usually omitted in the large and linear historical narratives of progress.

Combining insights from archival sources and cultural text analysis, the lecture discusses processes and events from the long 20th century that have shaped the reality of mining communities in several localities in former Yugoslavia. It attempts to offer a unified model for understanding the generative workings of violence and the ways in which different forms of violence interact, intertwine and feed each other in and around mines. Arguing 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, the lecture highlights the ambiguous moral economy that governs their relationship.