Baris Cayli

Social Networks of the Italian Mafia: The Strong and Weak Parts

In this paper, it is argued that well-built, social network system has enabled the Mafia to reach a certain level of success through three main networks: members, local people, and politicians. I assert that the role of the executive power of the state has been partially supportive in this success. Moreover, this paper also concludes that to combat different Mafia groups, it is essential to know their strong and weak parts. Consequently, it is found that their well-built network system does not solely comprise of strong parts but that the weak parts also exist, albeit, that they have not yet played a defective role in the resolution of the Mafia. Therefore, this paper suggests that the illustration of both the strong and weak parts of these networks can have prominent and assisting role in the combat against the Mafia phenomenon in the future, either by strengthening the weak parts or by weakening the strong parts of its networks.

Codes of Commitment to Crime and Resistance: Determining Social and Cultural Factors over the Behaviors of Italian Mafia Women

ABSTRACT This article categorizes thirty-three women in four main Italian Mafia groups and explores social and cultural behaviors of these women. This study introduces the feminist theory of belief and action. The theoretical inquiry investigates the sometimes conflicting behaviors of women when they are subject to systematic oppression. I argue that there is a cultural polarization among the categorized sub-groups. Conservative radicals give their support to the Mafia while defectors and rebels resist the Mafia. After testing the theory, I assert that emancipation of women depends on the strength of their beliefs to perform actions against the Mafiosi culture.

Creating Counter-Publics Against the Italian Mafia

Abstract This study aims to develop insight into the new medias struggle against the Mafia in Italy using the Libera Informazione, an anti-Mafia civil society organisation established in 2007, as a case study. The article argues that the endeavours of the Libera Informazione are aimed at creating a public sphere for anti-Mafia entries in the media and subsequently renewing public culture through channels in the constructed public sphere. During this process, communication strategies aim to inform the public at the local and national levels to increase consciousness about the political-criminal nexus and activities of the Mafia groups. Drawing on anthropological, moral, and reformist models of journalism, the author asserts that such a struggle is attainable in the long run, as it requires a consistent effort and inspiration, which already exist in the struggle of anti-Mafia media establishments against the Mafia in Italy.

Anti-Mafia Policies in Italy: The Need for Collaborative Governance and Transition of the Policy Actors from Isolation to Coalition

This paper focuses on the struggle of anti-mafia movements in Italy. This study has found that there is still lack of consistency in classification of anti-mafia policies. Moreover, there is neither unity among the policy actors nor active cooperation among multiple actors while designing anti-mafia policies. Therefore, this paper first aims to simplify an explanation of the policy actors by following an actor-based approach in order to classify the actors as direct (state) and indirect (nonstate) actors; then, it traces the direction of the policies from top to down and from bottom to top and determines the dimension of the policies as being at the macro and/or micro level. Second, this paper suggests that there should be collaboration that binds all actors legally in order to avoid multiple actors clashing and steer them from isolation to cooperation so as to take advantage of optimum point in anti-mafia policies. Finally, it is stressed that the building of cooperation should be through the “3 C” cycle - cohesion, consolidation, and commitment - in order to make effective and reflexive policies.

Renewing Criminalized and Hegemonic Cultural Landscapes

The Mafia’s long historical pedigree in Mezzogiorno, Southern Italy, has empowered the Mafioso as a notorious, uncontested, and hegemonic figure. The counter-cultural resistance against the mafiosi culture began to be institutionalized in the early 1990s. Today, Libera Terra is the largest civil society organization in the country that uses the lands confiscated from the Mafia as a space of cultural repertoire to realize its ideals. Deploying labor force through volunteer participation, producing biological fruits and vegetables, and providing information to the students on the fields are the principal cultural practices of this struggle. The confiscated lands make the Italian experience of anti-Mafia resistance a unique example by connecting the land with the ideals of cultural change. The sociocultural resistance of Libera Terra conveys a political message through these practices and utters that the Mafia is not invincible. This study draws the complex panorama of the Mafia and anti-Mafia movement that uses the ‘confiscated lands’ as cultural and public spaces for resistance and socio-cultural change. In doing so, this article sheds new light on the relationship between rural criminology and crime prevention policies in Southern Italy by demonstrating how community development practice of Libera Terra changes the meaning of landscape through iconographic symbolism and ethnographic performance.

Review: Felia Allum, The Invisible Camorra: Neapolitan Crime Families across EuropeAllumFelia, The Invisible Camorra: Neapolitan Crime Families across Europe, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2016; 286 pp.: ISBN 9781501702457, US

The Camorra is not simply another organized crime group. It is known as the most flexible, factious and violent mafia in Italy. Even though its origin is Naples and the surrounding area, Camorristi (the members of Camorra) moved to other countries in the last decades and the organization rapidly became internationalized. The Invisible Camorra explores the local and global dynamics that characterize the power of this notorious mafia group. Felia Allum spent many years studying the labyrinthine networks of the Camorra. In The Invisible Camorra, Allum meticulously examines the Camorra’s operational territories in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain and the UK. To determine the local and global motives of this movement, Allum interviewed magistrates and police officers and presents court records, police data and criminal confessions. The Invisible Camorra offers an absorbing narrative and makes clear how and why many Camorristi became invisible when they moved to another country because of police suppression or gang competition in their local territories in Italy. Their movement to another country was not based on merely income generation. There are other social, emotional, or psychological motives that force members of the Camorra to travel abroad. However, the business opportunities that the Camorristi created abroad provided them a good opportunity to present themselves as respectful and law-abiding citizens to the state officials. Human behaviour regulates actions according to perceived threats and goals. The need for cooperation in collective human behaviour canalizes the members of a social group to create a cohesive structure to respond to threats and then realize goals. Yet the collective human behaviour in the ranks of mafia clans is more capable than many other social structures when it comes to the elimination of threats and the revision of goals. This aptitude is a necessity for a social entity to control, transform and sustain itself as its 791972 ISS0010.1177/0268580918791972International Sociology ReviewsReviews: Economy, hidden and visible book-review2018

45.00 (hbk)

The present study explores police violence during the riots in London and Gezi Park protests in Istanbul. This study puts forth that the rise of social injustice in the UK and the erosion of plural democracy in Turkey clarify the paradox of state intervention because the two states prioritized rapid repression of uprising without consolidating public trust and social justice in the society. This comparative study reveals that the liberal and non-religious elements of the capitalist ruling system in the UK contain similar fractions of state repression when compared to the authoritarian and religious elements of the capitalist ruling system in Turkey. The authors conclude that police violence endures the social control of dissident communities while it maintains the sustainability of different capitalist ruling systems in the periods of social unrest.

Social Unrest in the UK and Turkey: Rethinking Police Violence against Dissident Communities

The social order of the current system has brought an increase in the public dissents and turned to a ‘normalized sociological pathology’ of the postmodern world. The unyielding public resistance examples in different cultural geographies, which are fragmented, limited and yet significant and expanding struggles, convey the message that the global order of the Powerful has entered the age of stagnation. This article aims to shed new light on the relationship between the social protests and global order that has given rise to new identities of local and global injustice. I argue that social protests in the last years display discernible patterns of a change in cultural perceptions of the activists in different public spaces. On the one hand, this signals the emergence of a new public order in the 21st century. On the other hand, the ravages of social catastrophe shape the very dynamics of the same public culture. ‘Enduring and resisting public cultures’ is introduced in this article as a benchmark to identify ethnographic struggles of the activists for the quest of a new public space, which represents ‘Another World’.

The Ravages of Social Catastrophe Striving for the Quest of ‘Another World’

This article argues that the best counterattack against globally oriented transnational organized crime (TOC) is by a global response. The contribution of participating states and the creation of a collective identity against TOC are both necessary. This creation would be more effective through transnational social movements. Therefore, activating the global justice movement (GJM) against TOC would be a significant achievement. This has not yet taken place for both structural and ideological reasons which are on the surface quite rational. If GJM activists create a more unified movement, however, and adhere more strictly to non-violence as have other social movements like the Libera anti-Mafia association of Italy and Flare Network of Europe, there is potential for convergence.