Italian-American conversations on the mafia

In 1961 the peace activist and anti-mafia campaigner Danilo Dolci spoke at a protest event at the Italian centennial of unification celebrations hosted by the City of Philadelphia. The reactions to the talk he gave on development initiatives in Western Sicily provide some insight into the transnational discussion that was developing around the mafia, governance and leadership in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Dolci and his supporters made the suggestion that the problems encountered by the post-war governments in Italy, Sicily and Philadelphia were a result of leaderships which presented or made the appearance of change but did not fix the underlying problems. This article maps how the conversation developed, why the idea of the mafia as a ‘thing’, an operating criminal organisation with Sicilian origins, was such an important narrative, and what it meant for those trying to make a claim to leadership positions

Archaeology · Art · Centennial · Conversation · Corporate governance · Economic history · Fall of man · Front (military · Geography · Literature · Management · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sicilian · Sociology · Unification · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law

• Philadelphia

  Michael Frisch, Russell F Weigley et al.•Journal of American History•1983

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• Realism, utopia and the mushroom cloud

  Ken Booth•International Affairs•1994

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• A history of contemporary Italy

  John Rosselli•International Affairs•1992

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• The Moral Basis of a Backward Society

  Edward C Banfield•Economica•1959

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