The ‘ndrangheta – the Calabrian region of Italy’s mafia – is one of wealthiest and most powerful criminal organizations today. It is considered Italy’s most powerful mafia; it’s not only the main object of concern for anti-mafia units in Italy, but also for joint investigative teams in Europe and beyond. Combining autobiography, travel ethnography, memoir, academic rigour and investigative journalism, this book provides a global outlook on the ‘ndrangheta, taking the reader to small villages and locations in Italy and abroad to Australia, Canada, United States and Argentina.
This book explores the role and implications of responsibility for anthropology, asking how responsibility is recognised and invoked in the world, what relations it draws upon, and how it comes to define notions of the person, institutional practices, ways of knowing and modes of evaluation. The category of responsibility has a long genealogy within the discipline of anthropology and it surfaces in contemporary debates as well as in anthropologists’ collaboration with other disciplines, including when anthropology is applied in fields such as development, medicine, and humanitarian response. As a category that unsettles, challenges and critically engages with political, ethical and epistemological questions, responsibility is central to anthropological theory, ethnographic practice, collaborative research, and applied engagement. With chapters focused on a variety of cultural contexts, this volume considers how anthropology can contribute to a better understanding of responsibility, including the ‘responsibility of anthropology’ and the responsibility of anthropologists to specific others.
This ground-breaking book offers a deep and original analysis of the Mafia – in particular Cosa Nostra – as a distinct form of politics. Marco Santoro breaks with criminal and economic approaches which see the Mafia as an industry of private protection and rationally calculating wealth accumulation. Instead he argues that it represents an alternative way of organizing political relations, the exercise of power, and the struggle for prestige. Nor is this a distortion or failure of the modern Western state, based on the rule of law: the Mafia is best understood as an older, alternative tradition of politics, a distinctly Southern institutional arrangement of social life focused on personal ties and obligations. Today, the Mafia still thrives among subaltern classes and in regions that the modern state has not yet incorporated, as a conservative counter-politics of prestige. Pivotal to understanding this world is a cultural sociology of the Mafia, offering the tools and concepts necessary to penetrate the symbolism and structures of Mafia life. Blending diverse theoretical strands with folk sources and the voices of Mafiosi themselves, Santoro develops a political theory of the Mafia, shedding new light on this captivating, global, and remarkably resilient phenomenon.
Anthropologists working in Italy are at the forefront of scholarship on several topics including migration, far-right populism, organised crime and heritage. This book heralds an exciting new frontier by bringing together some of the leading ethnographers of Italy and placing together their contributions into the broader realm of anthropological history, culture and new perspectives in Europe.
'May you live in interesting times’ was made famous by Sir Austen Chamberlain. The premise is that ‘interesting times’ are times of upheaval, conflict and insecurity - troubled times. With the growing numbers of displaced populations and the rise in the politics of fear and hate, we are facing challenges to our very ‘species-being’. Papers in the volume include ethnographic studies on the ‘refugee crisis’, the ‘financial crisis’ and the ‘rule of law crisis' in the Mediterranean as well as the crisis of violence and hunger in South America.
"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.
"The Mafia? What is the Mafia? Something you eat? Something you drink? I don't know the Mafia. I have never seen it." So said Mommo Piromalli, a 'Ndrangheta crime boss, to a journalist in the seventies. In Mafiacraft, Deborah Puccio-Den explores the Mafia's reliance on the force of silence, and undertakes a new form of ethnographic inquiry that focuses on the questions, rather than the answers. For Puccio-Den, the Mafia is not a stable social fact, but a cognitive event shaped by actions of silence. Rather than inquiring about what has previously been written or said, she explores the imaginative power of silence and how it gives consistency to special kinds of social ties that draw their strength from a state of indetermination. What methods might anthropologists use to investigate silence and to understand the life of the denied, the unspeakable, and the unspoken? How do they resist, fight, or capitulate to the strength of words, or to the force of law? In Mafiacraft, Puccio-Den's addresses these questions with a fascinating anthropology of silence that opens up new ground for the study of the world's most famous criminal organization.
While gangs and gang culture have been around for countless centuries, The Gang is one of the first academic studies of the phenomenon. Originally published in 1927, Frederic Milton Thrasher’s magnum opus offers a profound and careful analysis of hundreds of gangs in Chicago in the early part of the twentieth century. With rich prose and an eye for detail, Thrasher looked specifically at the way in which urban geography shaped gangs, and posited the thesis that neighborhoods in flux were more likely to produce gangs. Moreover, he traced gang culture back to feudal and medieval power systems and linked tribal ethos in other societies to codes of honor and glory found in American gangs. Thrasher approaches his subject with empathy and insightfulness, and creates a multifaceted and textured portrait that still has much to offer to readers today. With handsome images that evoke the era, this unabridged edition of The Gang not only explores an important moment in the history of Chicago, but also is itself a landmark in the history of sociology and subcultural theory.
A team of geologists comes to Siberia, 5,000 km east of Moscow, in search of the diamonds, called in Russian, almaz or brilliants. Together with the wealthy patriot-sponsors, they are on the mission to save the economically wracked country from the embezzlement and robbery of valuable resources. And they find itthe Diamond Triangle with 50 carat crystals. At the beginning, the explorers do not suspect that it will be hunted down by other adverse forces. The people in the taiga realize their almost unbearable task in time when it is too late to skip off and run away. They come upon many perilous snares among the snowy terrains and mountains and venture into the wilderness of that remote land, which lies east of the Ural Mountains. They are entrapped all around by all kind of bounty hunters, who viciously compete for the premium prize for their heads, appraised in million dollars. The group of faithful committed people turns into the fugitives in the Siberian taiga because they possess, so rare in the present human world qualitiespatriotism and belief. Then, in a remote corner of Siberia, encircled from all sides by the bounty hunters and very close to a tragic finale, the fugitives hear the battle sounds; help comes from their real friends and brothersthe pomors from the White Sea shores and aboriginal Nenets people, historical owners of the tundra. The sea people pomors, called in the past Ice Vikings, successfully get through that secret century-old route, north of the Arctic Circle, across the Kara Sea and Yamal Peninsula. The route their ancestors once upon a time had traced in deviation of the ruthless tsar guards and Moscows rulers. And now, almost four centuries later, they rediscover the route to freedom and escape from other merciless rulers. Once again, as in the past, the northern people of this enormous country come to help and protect against the dominance of brutal power.
Despite a rapidly changing economic and legal landscape, Italian mafias remain prominent actors in the global criminal underworld. This book provides an extensive and up-to-date view of how they adapt to shifting economic opportunities and intensifying legal and civic backlash.
