Deindustrialization and underdevelopment. Case study: Valea Jiului

Abstract

The paper is based on the preliminary results of the research project "Deindustrialization and under-development in the Romanian Transition. Individual/Collective Strategies and Reply Policies. Case study: Valea Jiului", that will be done within the POSDRU project "Plural and interdisciplinary in doctoral and post-doctoral programs". This paper intends to analyze the complex relation between economic development, social development and modernization. The basic hypothesis of the proposed analysis is that the economic development is not an irreversible process not even when it leads to social development as part of a modernizing program. Valea Jiului represents an example of how the economic and social development built on weak basis, become unsustainable. The collapse of this weak basis initiated after 1989 when the economy and the society changed and after a transition period produced a major negative social impact started with the restructuring of the mining. In less than 10 months, the number of the miners was reduced to half and the reduction continued. Today in Valea Jiului is only 15 % of the number of employees in 1989. The social effects of the mining restructuring were at communitarian level the underdevelopment, return to pre-modern occupations like the subsistence agriculture. A good example that will be deeply analyzed in this paper is the town Aninoasa, the first Romanian town in insolvency since 2013.