Mafiacraft : an ethnography of deadly silence / Deborah Puccio-Den.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Puccio-Den, Deborah, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Anthropology.

Silence (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xix, 273 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

HAU Books 2021

Chicago : HAU Books, 2021.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"The Mafia? What is the Mafia? Something you eat? Something you drink? I don't know the Mafia. I've never seen it." Mafiosi have often reacted this way to questions from journalists and law enforcement. Social scientists who study the Mafia usually try to pin down what it "really is," thus fusing their work with their object. In Mafiacraft, Deborah Puccio-Den undertakes a new form of ethnographic inquiry that focuses not on answering "What is the Mafia?" but on the ontological, moral, and political effects of posing the question itself. Her starting point is that Mafia is not a readily nameable social fact but a problem of thought produced by the absence of words. Puccio-Den approaches covert activities using a model of "Mafiacraft," which inverts the logic of witchcraft. If witchcraft revolves on the lethal power of speech, Mafiacraft depends on the deadly strength of silence. How do we write an ethnography of phenomena that cannot be named? Puccio-Den approaches this task with a fascinating anthropology of silence, breaking new ground for the study of the world's most famous criminal organization.

Contents:

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Personages

Introduction: From witchcraft to "mafiacraft": Shifting paradigms

Part I: Naming the mafia

Chapter 1: Does the mafia exist?

Chapter 2: The mafia as a plague

Chapter 3: How to photograph something that does not exist?

Chapter 4: Bearing witness

Chapter 5: The unnamable mafia

Part II: Judging the silence

Chapter 6: The Falcone method

Chapter 7: The Buscetta theorem

Chapter 8: The Impastato affair

Chapter 9: The Aiello trial

Chapter 10: The Provenzano code

Conclusion: Invisible things

References

Index.

Notes:

CC BY-NC-ND

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781912808694

1912808692

OCLC:

1451804137