Mafia Brotherhoods Organized Crime, Italian Style |
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| Author:
| Paoli, Letizia |
| Series title: | Studies in Crime and Public Policy Ser. |
| ISBN: | 978-0-19-515724-6 |
| Publication Date: | Oct 2003 |
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press, Incorporated
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| Book Format: | Hardback |
| List Price: | USD $49.95 |
Book Description:
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Forcefully dispelling a number of academic shibboleths, Paoli argues that to view Mafia associations as modern bureaucracies, illegal enterprises, or an industry specialising in private protection, is overly simplistic and often inaccurate. None of these conceptions adequately describe the range and plurality of functions in which the Mafia engages. The Mafia, Paoli demonstrates, are essentially multifuntional, ritual brotherhoods focused above all on retaining and consolidating their...
More DescriptionForcefully dispelling a number of academic shibboleths, Paoli argues that to view Mafia associations as modern bureaucracies, illegal enterprises, or an industry specialising in private protection, is overly simplistic and often inaccurate. None of these conceptions adequately describe the range and plurality of functions in which the Mafia engages. The Mafia, Paoli demonstrates, are essentially multifuntional, ritual brotherhoods focused above all on retaining and consolidating their local political power base. It is precisely this myopia - a parochialism which contrasts strikingly with the Mafiosi's more expansionist American counterparts - that today weakens the competitiveness of Italian Mafia associations in the entrepeneurial world of illegal global commerce. This is a truly interdisciplinary work of sociology, history, politics and economics, Mafia Brotherhoods reveals, in dramatic detail, the true face of one of the world's most mythologized criminal organisations.