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AbstractThis paper examines the limits and pressures imposed on South African deep‐level mining technology by changing economic and socio‐political constraints that have obliged mining engineers to adapt their practices of "getting gold out of the ground." Initially employing straight‐forward arguments about the importance of means for achieving ends, the paper eventually raises questions that complicate our understanding of practices that underlie simple conceptions of mining technology.

Chronicles the development & activities of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in South Africa since its formation in 1982 from a social movement perspective. Data obtained via interviews with union leaders & members are drawn on to illuminate the processes of structural change & political opportunity in the country that laid the groundwork for the rise of the NUM. Rejecting social movement theory's notion of "cultural framing," a more dialectical & practical approach is adopted to explain how culture functions as ideology. Antonio Gramsci's notion of "common sense" is employed to describe the relationship between the political, the material, & the ideological in the formation of the NUM. The role of "mobilizing structures" linking informal networks & social movement organizations is explained & the existence of such structures in the South African coal mines is demonstrated. Other problems with social movement theory are delineated & an alternative way of approaching theory is proposed, highlighting the traditions of Georg Simmel (1980) & Max Weber (1949). K. Hyatt Stewart

Chronicles the development & activities of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in South Africa since its formation in 1982 from a social movement perspective. Data obtained via interviews with union leaders & members are drawn on to illuminate the processes of structural change & political opportunity in the country that laid the groundwork for the rise of the NUM. Rejecting social movement theory's notion of "cultural framing," a more dialectical & practical approach is adopted to explain how culture functions as ideology. Antonio Gramsci's notion of "common sense" is employed to describe the relationship between the political, the material, & the ideological in the formation of the NUM. The role of "mobilizing structures" linking informal networks & social movement organizations is explained & the existence of such structures in the South African coal mines is demonstrated. Other problems with social movement theory are delineated & an alternative way of approaching theory is proposed, highlighting the traditions of Georg Simmel (1980) & Max Weber (1949). K. Hyatt Stewart

The primary purpose of this article is to examine the structures of domination in a South African gold mine from the perspective of black migrant miners. The formal management organizational blueprint for mine and compound is compared with the actual social structure of the mine. The article concludes that the black miner's experience of domination in the South African gold mines is a complex combination of management-ordained authority and personal power on the part of a series of overlapping, sometimes conflicting, sometimes complementary, black fiefdoms; namely those of the Team Leader [boss boy], Personnel Assistant, Induna, and the clerks.