Mafia brotherhoods : organized crime, Italian style / Letizia Paoli.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Paoli, Letizia.

Series:

Studies in crime and public policy

Standardized Title:

Fratelli di mafia. English

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Mafia--Italy--Sicily--History.

Mafia.

Italy--Sicily.

History.

Mafia--United States--History.

United States.

'Ndrangheta--Italy--History.

'Ndrangheta.

'Ndrangheta--History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 289 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Edition:

American edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 2003.

Language Note:

Translated from the Italian.

Summary:

Secrecy is one of the defining characteristics of the Italian mafia. Wiretaps, financial records, and the rare informant occasionally reveal its inner workings, but these impressions are all too often spotty and fleeting, hampering serious scholarship on this major form of criminal activity. During her years as a consultant to the Italian government agency responsible for combating organized crime, Letizia Paoli was given unparalleled insider access to the confessions by pentiti (literally, repentants), former mafia operatives who had turned. This mafia "hard core" came primarily from the two largest and most influential Southern Italian mafia associations, known as Cosa Nostra and 'Ndrangheta, each composed of about one hundred mafia families. The sheer volume of these confessions, numbering in the hundreds, and the detail they contained enabled the Italian government to effectively break up the Italian mafia in one of the most dramatic law enforcement successes in modern times. Paoli draws on these same documents to provide a clinically accurate portrait of mafia behavior, motivations, and structure.

Puncturing academic notions of a modernized mafia, Paoli argues that to view mafia associations as bureaucracies, illegal enterprises, or an industry specializing in private protection is overly simplistic and often inaccurate. These conceptions do not adequately describe the range of functions in which the mafia engage, nor do they hint at the mafia's limitations. The mafia, Paoli demonstrates, are essentially multifunctional ritual brotherhoods focused above all on retaining and consolidating their local political power base. It is precisely this myopia that has prevented these organizations from developing the skills needed to be a successful and lasting player in the entrepreneurial world of illegal global commerce. A truly interdisciplinary work of history, politics, economics, and sociology, Mafia Brotherhoods reveals in dramatic detail the true face of one of the world's most mythologized criminal organizations.

Contents:

Mafia associations and ruling bodies

Status and fraternization contracts

Secrecy and violence

Multiplicity of goals and functions

Mafia, state, and society.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-274) and index.

ISBN:

0195157249

OCLC:

50079698