A tale of reverse deviance: non-compliant spatial practices in the land of Gomorrah

Abstract

Racketeering local activities, though less relevant in terms of financial turnover, still represents a distinctive feature of mafia-like organisations for it provides them with striking social power. Mafias constitute indeed forms of governance that heavily rely on the acquiescence, if not on the consensus, of the community which they are rooted in. I thus argue that territoriality is critical for a comprehensive understanding of the mafia phenomenon: territories contribute to the reproduction of mafia groups not only in ecological terms, providing human and economic resources to organised crime, but also in cultural ones, forming symbolic and representational spaces that play an active role in the socialisation of the norms at the bottom of people's compliance. The production of space in areas policed by mafia groups is the dynamics that I sought to account for by undertaking field research in the surroundings of Caserta, also known as Gomorrah, where the clout of the Camorra (the Neapolitan mafia) is notorious and yet to be tarnished. I focused on non-compliant spatial practices for illuminating, by contrast, how space takes part to the construction of the mafia governance: the findings presented in this paper come from participant observation and in-depth interviews conducted in former properties of the Camorra where two worker cooperatives installed themselves and started legal businesses in outright contrast with organised crime. This process of reterritorialisation, I argue, discloses the sociological intersection between space and mafia, raising relevant policy implications about the fight against such form of organised crime.2

Lost in Space? The spatial and scalar dimensions of organised crime in the Pacific

“…The use of territorial markers – in particular flags – has provided vessels with sanctuary from law enforcement. This reflects Trifuoggi's (2015) contention that organised crime involves a competition over sovereignty between illicit actors and the state.…”

“…Second, scholars have examined the connections and disconnections between objects and human actors (Hall, 2010; Penna and Kirby, 2013; Hastings, 2015; Trifuoggi, 2015). For example, Hastings (2015) tracks North Korean drug trafficking networks to show how illicit drugs travel across the globe.…”

Security Governance: Mafia Control over Ordinary Crimes

“…Through this process of substituting for formal institutions, protection became an important method for enforcing mafias’ power. In a similar vein, the more recent proliferation of mafias in territories other than their original ones appears to also be a consequence of the lack of legitimate institutional control over certain sectors of the local economy (Trifuoggi 2015; Varese 2006). The concept of protection has been extensively investigated over the last three decades.…”

“…One of the strongest aspects of protection theories is that they explain both the dominance and endurance of mafias: “one cannot imagine that the longevity of Mafia dominance in certain regions could do without the implicit or explicit support of large parts of the population, the government, and economic actors” (Kleemans 2014:4). Not by chance, the process of institutionalization of mafia groups transforms them “into territorial and political organizations, providing people with regular or undeclared jobs, granting family allowances to relatives of arrested or dead mafiosi , and policing entire urban and rural areas” (Trifuoggi 2015:4). And, finally, self-esteem and the desire to live in a safer environment may also push mafias to control ordinary crimes.…”