Le mafie dalla società locale all'economia globale

Although their historical and geographic specificity is widely recognized, we might also assume the Italian mafias as ideal-types of the organized crime. The main purpose is here to deal with their processes of reproduction and transformation. Starting from the historical contexts within which the Italian mafias took their origin, my analysis has been gradually including more and more contents. First, I am concerned with the main factors that have led to the mafia’s successful pattern. Among other factors, my hypothesis especially refers to the mafia’s “external relationships”, by which I mean the social capital deriving from its capability of constructing social relationships and networks. Second, I describe the mafia as a local society’s phenomenon. As such, its territorial power structure based on the extortion/protection process is quite important. Then, I analyze the mafia’s processes of territorial expansion into untraditional areas. To this regard, different theses and interpretations are to be taken into account and compared with each other - such as: the thesis that denies the mafia’s exportability; the contagion metaphor; the piovra image; the expansion strategies. What makes the transnational organized crime relevant is the globalization of economy. Therefore, the connection between globalization and crime is to be examined. The key-connection, I assume, is here between economy and regulation. And I hypothesize that the decline of national States and the crisis of political regulatory patterns affect the expansion of organized crime. The more criminal groups are structured, the more they act successfully both at the local and global levels. The conclusive paragraph of the article is about new types of landscapes and “criminalscapes” related to globalization.