Façade Egalitarianism? Mafia and Cooperative in Sicily

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2290615
AutoresT Rakopoulos (0000-0003-1902-0274, University of Oslo)
Año2017
Volumen40
Número1
Páginas104-121
Fecha de publicación2017-05-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPoLAR Political and Legal Anthropology Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1081-6976 • E-ISSN: 1555-2934
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/plar.12207
OpenAlexW2615664701
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6
Referencias citadas23

What happens when a criminal organization operating through hierarchical relations establishes a cooperative institution committed to equal participation? This article explores the organizational intersection of a Mafia cooperative, drawing from a trial case involving several Sicilian mafiosi sharing a social life (convivenza) with laypeople in an agrarian winemaking cooperative. This intersection begs exploration of the Mafia's striving for social consent, which is a relatively understudied feature of organized crime. The Mafia's use of egalitarian practices and lawful organization reveals a process of converting cooperative egalitarianism into a hierarchy. This article explores the Mafia cooperative as a paradoxical institution, and it examines the empirical collapse of conceptual dichotomies of coercion-consent and hierarchical-egalitarian systems of social organization. By investigating a Mafia cooperative and its associated convivenza, the article moves beyond such apparent dichotomies to analyze complex outcomes of this social life and to propose a Gramscian attention to consent rather than the traditional focus on violence in Mafia studies

Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Historical and Environmental Studies · Italian Social Issues and Migration