Podzemna zajednica: antropologija rudarenja i kultura podzemlja na području Raše
Underground Community: Anthropology of Mining and the Underground Culture in Raša and its Surroundings

Summary/Abstract: The miners are best known for their accidents and strikes, that are the inherent part of their everyday life; however, underneath these two elements, that are general points of their identity, there are much more complex processes of survival, as well as attempts to create their workers' underground tradition and to make it nobler. It is best expressed through the "communication" with the work habitat, connected with its reverence, that results in the comparison of the mine with the war. The use of specific signalization and materials, the co-existence of the miners and mine mice sensitive to underground gas, "listening" to the cliffs and waterways are just some of the examples of the underground culture or the miners' attempts to stay underground as long and as successful as possible, to survive and to satisfy the daily norm of coal mining given throughout the twentieth century by the Austrian, Italian, Yugoslav and Croatian colliery management. The relationship between the workers who earned their daily or monthly paycheck seven hundred meter under the Earth's surface has been strongly influenced by the extreme environment of their workplace, the result of which was a specific work ethic and adaptation to the workplace, developed as opposition to the managements who have very often, by employing "scientifically and ideologically organized" work (Anbinden system, Bedeaux system, the Udarništvo or high-impact work), taken advantage of the miners and the mine, without taking neither their safety nor the necessary preservation of the ore into consideration, which in return resulted in numerous disasters, but had also created a basis for workers to build their specific feeling of unity – an important element of the complex miners' identity. The underground everyday life of the miners has oscillated between the two, neither grateful nor benignant masters – the management, that often perceives the worker and the mine merely as a means of making profit and the nature, to which it could be defined only as an usurper. It is this narrow space between the "punishment and obligation" that the wit and even the creativity of one of the most burdensome and difficult professions lies; it is translated into the miners' and workers' underground tradition, inherent and specific skills whose elements can be found above the surface as well, and that has survived and has, due to their efforts, changed and developed.

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