Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T19:11:14.087Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fragments of an economic theory of the mafia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Diego Gambetta
Get access

Extract

We know much and understand little about the Italian mafia. The amount of factual information surrounding it—whatever that ‘it’ may be—is disproportionately and dramatically greater than our theoretical understanding of this elusive entity. We do not know everything it might be interesting to know, of course, yet in the monumental quantity of scholarly and judicial sources devoted to the mafia, we can find far more information than scholars have been able to make good, cogent sense of. Facts and anecdotes are not only numerous, but of the most diverse and seemingly irreconcilable kinds, and theoretical and analytical shortcomings have made it impossible to accomplish two fundamental and related operations: first, to discriminate between relevant information and contingent ethnographical detail, and between reliable and distorted evidence; second, to find a coherent thread linking whatever disparate pieces of information remain after the first screening operation.

Type
An enquiry into patronage
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , May 1988 , pp. 127 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Arlacchi, P., 1983. La mafia imprenditrice (Bologne, Il Mulino).Google Scholar
Blok, A., 1974. The mafia of a Sicilian village, 1860–1960 (Oxford, Basil Blackwell).Google Scholar
Buchanan, J., 1973. A defense of organized crime?, in Rottenberg, S. (ed.), The economics of crime and punishment (Washington D.C., the American Enterprise Institute).Google Scholar
Cancila, O., 1984. Come andavano le cose nel sedicesimo secolo (Palermo, Sellerio).Google Scholar
Chinnici, G., and Santino, U., 1986. L'omicidio a Palermo e provincia negli anni 1960–1966 e 1978–1984 (Palermo, Stass).Google Scholar
Dasgupta, P., 1988. Trust as a commodity, in D. Gambetta (ed.), 1988.Google Scholar
Franchetti, L., [1876] 1974. Condizioni politiche ed amministrative della Sicilia (Firenze, Vallecchi).Google Scholar
Gambetta, D. (ed.), 1988. Trust. Making and breaking cooperative relations (Oxford, Basil Blackwell).Google Scholar
Gambetta, D., 1988a. Mafia: the price of distrust, in D. Gambetta (ed.), 1988.Google Scholar
Gambetta, D., 1988b. Can we trust trust?, in D. Gambetta (ed.), 1988.Google Scholar
Hess, H., 1973. Mafia and mafiosi: the structure of power (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books).Google Scholar
Lane, F., 1966. Venice and history (Baltimore, John Hopkins Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupo, S., 1987. Agricoltura ricca nel sottos-viluppo (Catania, societá di storia patria per la Sicilia orientale).Google Scholar
Monnier, M., [1863] 1965. La Camorra (Napoli, Arturo Berisio Editore).Google Scholar
Pagden, A., 1988. The destruction of trust and its economic consequences in the case of eighteenth-century Naples, in D. Gambetta 1988.Google Scholar
Piselli, F., and Arrighi, G., 1985. Parentela, clientela e comunitá, in d'Italia, Storia: Le Regioni dall'Unitá ad oggi: la Calabria (Torino, Einaudi).Google Scholar
Pizzorno, A., 1987. I mafiosi come classe media violenta, Polis, 1, 195–204.Google Scholar
Reuter, P., 1983. Disorganized crime. The economics of the visible hand (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press).Google Scholar
Schelling, T., 1984. Choice and consequences (Harvard, Harvard University Press).Google Scholar