The Italian Mafia

Paoli, Letizia

doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199730445.013.025

Cited by 50 publications

(94 citation statements)

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“…In May 2006 a list of more than 100 businesses available to publicly denounce the pizzo, claiming their refusal to pay, was published in a local newspaper and diffusion on national media followed. In the years after 2004, more than 1000 firms have 5 Thorough accounts of the Sicilian mafia are given, among others, by Gambetta (1993) and Paoli (2003).…”

Section: The Addiopizzo Experience and Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Resisting the extortion racket: an empirical analysis

et al. 2018

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In this paper we perform a statistical evaluation of whether it is worthwhile, in economic terms, to resist to extortion demands by the mafia, from the point of view of firms operating in an area dominated by criminal organizations. We use a unique collected and matched database on firm characteristics on the city of Palermo, highly controlled by the mafia racket. The underlined idea is that the claimed resistance has (direct and indirect) costs and benefits, so that a rational firm should take this decision according its economic expectations on the future profits (in addition to potential ethic considerations). It means that the economic policy messages of this experience can be linked to make more profitable the racket resistance (as a signal sent to the market). Our evidences based on multilevel discrete choice models show that this decision is strongly influenced by socio-economic characteristics of the district, type of activity involved and other factors.

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Section: The Addiopizzo Experience and Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Resisting the extortion racket: an empirical analysis

et al. 2018

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“…In the case of the Famiglia Basilischi, for example, other pre-existing criminal groups dominate the criminal market -thus it is a saturated criminal market -but also these organisations are larger and more competitive. The clans of 'ndrangheta have interests in Basilicata and are also generalist groups; they exploit the international reputation of the brand ''ndrangheta' to engage in various types of activities (Paoli, 2003;Sergi, 2015b;DNA, 2014). to every new organisation.…”

Section: Competition and Niche In The Marketmentioning

confidence: 99%

A qualitative reading of the ecological (dis)organisation of criminal associations. The case of the ‘Famiglia Basilischi’ in Italy

Sergi

2015

Trends Organ Crim

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This paper combines the theoretical foundations of organisational ecology -one of the most important approaches in economic sociology -with classic criminological theories to interpret the birth, evolution and death of criminal associations. This mixed approach will support the interpretation of organised crime groups as phenomena strictly linked to the environment as well as to other competitors in criminal markets. This paper analyses the birth, evolution and death of a criminal association in Basilicata, Southern Italy, known as the 'Famiglia Basilischi'. The case is exemplary of how ecological conditions affect the success or failure of a newly formed criminal association. These conditions can therefore be indicators to interpret organised criminal activities in similar environments.

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“…For my part, I contend that, being territoriality such a distinctive feature of mafia-like organisations (Paoli, 2003;Campana, 2011;Varese, 2011;Allum, 2014), territories should not be regarded just in ecological terms as stated by most criminological accounts concerning the environment. Rather, they should be acknowledged as social spaces taking actively part to the cultural construction of the aforementioned grey zone and, therefore, of the mafia social power.…”

Section: Historical Sociological and Legal Accounts Of The Mafia Phmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because territoriality is of great importance for mafia-like organisations (Paoli, 2003;Campana, 2011;Varese, 2011;Allum, 2014), I adopted a spatial perspective for my research, arguing that the sociology of space may add an original contribution to the topic: spatial practices of people coping with organised crime in their daily life can serve as a privileged point of observation to account for the mafia social power. The present study is an ethnography of a reterritorialisation process located in the surroundings of Caserta, which territories have been notoriously tyrannised by the Camorra (Varese, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Trifuoggi

2015

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy

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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

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The Italian Mafia

Cited by 50 publications

References 0 publications

Resisting the extortion racket: an empirical analysis

Resisting the extortion racket: an empirical analysis

A qualitative reading of the ecological (dis)organisation of criminal associations. The case of the ‘Famiglia Basilischi’ in Italy

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

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