Despite a rapidly changing economic and legal landscape, Italian mafias remain prominent actors in the global criminal underworld. This book provides an extensive and up-to-date view of how they adapt to shifting economic opportunities and intensifying legal and civic backlash.

Relying on previously undisclosed confessions of former mafia members now cooperating with the police, Letizia Paoli provides a clinically accurate portrait of mafia behavior, motivations, and structure in Italy. The mafia, Paoli demonstrates, are essentially multifunctional ritual brotherhoods focused above all on retaining and consolidating their local political power base. A truly interdisciplinary work of history, politics, economics, and sociology, Mafia Brotherhoods reveals in dramatic detail the true face of one of the world's most mythologized criminal organizations.

Pickering-Iazzi uses an array of cultural documents from 1990 to the present to examine the myths, values, codes of behaviour, and relationships produced by the Italian mafia through a wide cross-disciplinary lens.

The Sicilian mafia, or Cosa Nostra, is far from being Italy's only dangerous criminal fraternity. The south of the country hosts two other major mafias: the camorra, from Naples and its hinterland; and the 'ndrangheta, the mafia from the poor and isolated region of Calabria that has now risen to become the most powerful mob of all. Each of these brotherhoods has its own methods, its own dark rituals, its own style of ferocity and corruption. Their early history is little known; indeed some of it has been entirely shrouded in myth and silence. Until now.

This book covers two lesser known but important members of the Italian Mafia: the ’Ndrangheta and the Sacra Corona Unita. Italian criminal organizations, in particular Mafia, are one of the most commonly researched organized crime groups, usually focusing on the Sicilian Mafia, Cosa Nostra, or the Neapolitan Mafia, Camorra. However, Italy has other two other Mafias, one in Apulia, Sacra Corona Unita, and the other in Calabria, ’Ndrangheta. Although an extensive literature is available on Cosa Nostra and Camorra, less is known about the other two organizations, particularly their operations in the United States. Territory is one of the most important elements in the Mafia because the criminal organization operates its signoria territoriale, controlling every illegal activity in its sphere of action. This territorial power goes beyond the Italian boundaries reaching the United States of America and other non-European countries, with the mere aim of developing their drug/weapon deals and money laundering businesses. Mafia, therefore, is not a uniquely Italian phenomenon as it might appear, but a worldwide phenomenon, affecting many societies and economies. This unique volume is its interest into a field as yet completely provides new information about the ’Ndrangheta and Sacra Corona Unita written by an interdisciplinary group of Italian scholars. It covers organizational, hierarchic, and operative aspects: that is, the role that they have in politics, in their own families, in business relations in Italy and abroad. It also highlights the particular role that Cosa Nostra and Camorra had in their development. This work will be of interest to criminology researchers studying organized crime, corruption, money laundering and trafficking, as well as researchers from related fields, such as political science, economics, and international relations.

Organized crime is spreading like a global virus as mobs take advantage of open borders to establish local franchises at will. This book argues that mafiosi often find themselves abroad against their will, rather than through a strategic plan to colonizethe territories.

The Italian-American mafia has its roots in a mysterious and powerful criminal network in Sicily. While the mythology of the mafia has been widely celebrated in American culture, the true origins of its rituals, laws, and methods have never actually been revealed. John Dickie uses startling new research to expose the secrets of the Sicilian mafia, providing a fascinating account that is more violent, frightening, and darkly comic than anything conceived in popular movies and novels. How did the Sicilian mafia begin? How did it achieve its powerful grip in Italy and America? How does it operate today? From the mafia's origins in the 1860s to its current tense relationship with the Berlusconi government, Cosa Nostra takes us to the inner sanctum where few have dared to go before. This is an important work of history and a revelation for anyone who ever wondered what it means to be "made" in the mob.

The first of its kind in English, Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature is a selection of readings from Italian fiction and non-fiction writers on the subject of the Mafia. Among the renowned writers featured are Giovanni Verga, Grazia Deledda, Anna Maria Ortese, Livia De Stefani, and Silvana La Spina, as well as famous witnesses such as Felicia Impastato, Letizia Battaglia, and Rita Atria who provide personal, often terrifying testimonies about their experiences with the Mafia. It is a historically diverse examination of criminal and outlaw institutions by some of the most significant figures in Italian literature. These newly translated writings show the ways in which Italians perceived and wrote about the Mafia and crime from the 1880s to the 1990s. Among them are stories dealing with the important legends used by the Mafia as sources for their image and ideology, legends such as the brigand and the Blessed Paulists. Some of the fascinating themes discussed are connections between the Mafia, the State, and the Catholic Church; the Mafia and children; women and the Mafia; the Black Hand; and relations between the Mafia and the Allied Forces during the Second World War. Robin Pickering-Iazzi incorporates an invaluable introduction that charts key periods in the history of Italy and the Mafia, and profiles each of the authors in the collection, noting their major works in Italian as well as those available in English. These and other features make this text especially appropriate for courses in Italian studies. Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature takes a unique and intriguing approach to the subject of the Mafia, and offers informed judgements about its historical impact on Italian society and culture.

This handbook explores organized crime, which it divides into two main concepts and types: the first is a set of stable organizations illegal per se or whose members systematically engage in crime, and the second is a set of serious criminal activities that are typically carried out for monetary gain.

Today, mafias operate across the globe, with hundreds of thousands of members and billions of dollars in revenue. From Hong Kong to New York, these vast organizations spread their tentacles into politics, finance and everyday life. Criminologist Federico Varese draws on a lifetime's research to give us access to some of the world's most secretive societies. Mixing reportage with case studies and historical insights, this is the story of mafia as it really is: filled with boredom and drama, death and disaster, ambition and betrayal.