Felia Allum, Isabella Clough Marinaro and Rocco Sciarrone (eds.), Italian Mafias Today. Territory, Business and Politics (Cheltenham: E. Elgar, 2019)

Abstract

As an Italian academic who has lived and worked in North America and Northern Europe, I am frequently saddened, but by no means surprised, by the cavalier references that my non-Italians colleagues frequently make to the mafia. On the one hand, they somehow assume it to be a rather prosaic and obvious aspect of daily life throughout Italy, and Italy alone. On the other hand, perhaps conditioned by “TV series such as Gomorrah, the US ‘reality’ TV show Mob Wives” (1) or by Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather movie trilogy, they talk of it as though the mafia were something cool, glamorous, almost enviable: the magic union of Svengali and Giorgio Armani.

Keywords

• 'ndrangheta
• camorra
• mafia
• sacra corona unita
• criminology