Miners - a Privileged Category of the Working Class? Valea Jiului (Romania) in Socialism and Post-Socialism

Abstract

This article addresses the dynamics of social inequalities in socialist and post-socialist Romania, following the particular situation of Valea Jiului miners (in Romania), from the creating the image of the working-class heroes to the loss of preferential status, together with the post-1989 transition from communism to capitalism and from the planned economy to the market one. Therefore, the article includes the way in which the miners’ class identity was built over time, highlighting rather a preferential status of a psychological nature than a material one, the practices of disciplining their masculinity with the help of state propaganda and how this image of a homogeneous, disciplined and solidary group was diluted after the fall of communism.