Paper short abstract:

The presentation reflects on the construction of masculinities across space & time,in songs about the mining sector.It relies on more than 50 songs, from 6 countries,between the 19th & 21st centuries.I identify 2 main opposed types of masculinity:underground vs white collar,with both specific values

Paper long abstract:

The corpus includes different genres of songs, to examine masculinities as they reveal passions & social relations.The mining worlds that emerge from mining songs are mostly masculine, transmitted by authorized persons:male miners themselves or women related to them(spouses, daughters, sisters and mothers).I identify how the construction of sexual difference evolves (or not), showing continuities and changes in the social relations of production and class in the mining sector.Mining masculinities are produced through embodied relations of alliance,complicity & subordination & in favour of hegemonic domination.The masculinity of underground miners, based in the values of physical force,honesty, solidarity & fatherhood.The masculinity of white collar miners,equated with decision-making,power-sanctioning, duplicity and coldness. In dialogue several types of feminitity are developed,especially the figure of the "virile woman".These complementary representations correspond to an almost constant conflict between class groups (workers versus bosses) more than one between men and women,pointing toward the gendering of mining class identities beyond assumptions of sexual difference. I identify the mechanisms of domination and subordination in the underground mining masculinities through the figure of the deviant (class & gender trator); second, between these 2 competitive mining masculinities through the power of refusal. I conclude demonstrating how the main opposition between mining masculinities is the staging of a confrontation between the (ineffective) power of workers to display their own bodies & the white-collar capacity to controlling the worker's body.