Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The word “mafia,” although historically associated with Sicilian organized crime, is widely used to label similar, and not so similar, phenomena throughout the world. Indeed, the term has been applied to all manner of violent criminal organizations (and some clique-like formations that are neither violent nor criminal). Since the fall of the Soviet Union, references to mafia have appeared with special frequency in Russia and Eastern Europe, and in the context of transnational trafficking in proscribed commodities. Early attempts to analyze and account for these apparently rampant mafia formations made use of a market model of supply and demand which paid scant attention to the political and cultural aspects of the various generative situations, or to differences among the crime groups that were generated. Emphasis fell on the unraveling power of states to administer and enforce a legal order, as old regimes collapsed and markets were created or deregulated. Overall, the state's loss of prerogatives in relation to private enterprise, and the emergence of the “information society,” were put forward as general conditions, with the nascent mafias seen as everywhere quite similar and easily articulated into global criminal networks. The work of sociologist Diego Gambetta exemplifies this approach. Conjuring up a market metaphor, Gambetta defines the Sicilian mafia (which he considers ... log in or subscribe to read full text