Naslov
Absolute heroes. Ethnography of socialist Yugoslavia minig aristocracy

Autori
Matošević, Andrea

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, znanstveni

Skup
On the Surface: The Heritage of Mines and Mining

Mjesto i datum
Innsbruck, Austrija, 14.04.2011. - 16.04.2011

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Nije recenziran

Ključne riječi
Stahanovism; Taylorism; shock-work; Yugoslavia; socialism

Sažetak
A Soviet „invention“ which spread trough all socialist countries – „Shock work system“ (Stakhanovism) – was in the post-Second World War period socialist countries, claimed to be the „only way“ in which industrial production could be increased exponentially. The movement was named after the miner Aleksei Stakhanov, who in the night of August 30-31, 1935 hewed 102 tons of coal, or fourteen times his quota. His system rapidly spread in agriculture and all industrial sectors. Mostly recruited from manual workers, these individuals (Stakhanovists) were often called Homines extraordinarii for their working capacity, creativity and sacrifice – socialism claimed hard work as an anthropogenic and demiurgic necessity. Even if praised as absolute heroes whose methods of work were exclusively inherent to the new socialist ideology, the very core of Stakhanovism, its basic elements can be found in Taylorist and and Fordist principles of scientific management as part and parcel of the “Western” rationalization of work. In Yugoslavia, from its very outset, the “mining aristocracy” example (Antun Bičić, Alija Sirotanović, Risto Mijatović, Antun Zagorišek etc.), whose role was also to abolish the distinction between managerial conceptualization of work tasks and workers execution of them, contained instructions on how to live as well as on how to work. The control of body and its impulses becomes central to understanding the movement. Although shock workers were depicted in mass media as “larger than life and nature”, as time passed, they turned into weakened and anonymous individuals whose example did not match the propagated rule of permanency. They became known not only as the “exploited” but also as “ridiculed generation”.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Etnologija i antropologija

POVEZANOST RADA