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Fragments of an economic theory of the mafia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Diego Gambetta
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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

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References

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