What do you think?
Rate this book
The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection
In a society where trust is in short supply and democracy weak, the Mafia sells protection, a guarantee of safe conduct for parties to commercial transactions. Drawing on the confessions of eight Mafiosi, Diego Gambetta develops an elegant analysis of the economic and political role of the Sicilian Mafia.
346 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1993
16 people are currently reading
398 people want to read
About the author
Diego Gambetta
18 books20 followersDiego Gambetta is a Professor of Sociology at Nuffield College of the University of Oxford.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 10, 2018
A look at the history, organization and economics of the mafia -- particularly in its Sicilian variety, but with some comparisons with the American families.
As the title hints, the author's thesis is that the mafia, fundamentally, is in the business of dispute resolution and private protection. As the author takes pains to show, this protection isn't simply "protection" in the sense of extortion -- you do [often] get the genuine article. Sometimes this has socially positive cast to it -- the mafia really do suppress many kinds of crime in Sicily. More often, though, the protection the mafia offer is protection from competition. For example, the Palermo fish market -- one of the major fish markets in a major maritime region -- for a long time had only a handful of middlemen. Potential new entrants were advised that entering the business would be hazardous to their health. Similarly, if you want to do a construction project in mafia territory, you not only make direct payments to them, but must use their approved suppliers and subcontractors. The mafia-protected agents are sometimes family members, often not.
The author displays a somewhat excessive degree of essentialization -- he acknowledges that the mafia have a major role in, e.g., drug smuggling but assures the reader that this is merely a side business, or an internalized customer, not the core of what they do. I'm not sure this distinction is meaningful, but I'm mostly persuaded of his core claim that protection, forced cartelization and so forth is central to the mafia in a way that, say, bootlegging is not.
A question the author raises, but doesn't answer, is how the mafia compares to a government, a political machine, or a feudal aristocracy -- all of which also offer protection, which often claim an exclusive territory, and sometimes use coercion to enforce their will.
A few other things that caught my eye -- the Sicilian mafia is a phenomenon of _western_ Sicily and always has been. The author exhibits maps of "mafia activity" from the 1870s, which are largely similar to maps of the same, from a century later. Palermo is a mafia town, Syracuse isn't.
The author's explanation is that in the 1860s and 70s, there was a great deal of tumult in Sicily as the pre-unification aristocracy was dis-established, a great deal of church and customary property was put onto the market, and cash-crop agriculture took off. The result in the west was that the new farmers and businesses started hiring toughs who coalesced into the mafia. In eastern Sicily, the existing elites were a bit better established and were able to hang on and exclude mafia-like societies.
The word "mafia" is etymologically obscure. It seems that the collective noun and organization name is a back-formation from mafioso, which was in circulation meaning "swagger", with overtones of fearlessness, pride, and enterprising. There was a very popular 1863 play "I mafiusi di la Vicaria" about a prison gang with mafia-like characteristics -- and this seems to have popularized the term throughout Italy.
The real mafia often borrow from fictional depictions -- the author reports a real mafia wedding in Sicily where the organizers decided that the sound track from The Godfather was the ideal music. Likewise, a horse's head in somebody's bed was a literary invention that was later deployed by real mafiosi. However, similar gestures go back well before Puzzo's depiction; e.g. finding a dead fish left in a locked car, having one's pets killed, etc.
The mafia don't have good ways to describe themselves. The name "mafia" is distinctly a term by and for outsiders. As the literary depictions often have it, the insiders talk about "cosa nostra" --
"this thing of ours." It's not a proper noun -- it's a sign that there is a vagueness, an unavoidable and involuntary vagueness, about exactly what it is that the mafia are doing. Sometimes they say "la stessa cosa" -- "the same thing."
The Italian judiciary has historically been relatively soft on the mafia. More than elsewhere, Italian jurisprudence and judicial culture doesn't expect the law of the government to be the only rules -- there is an acknowledged role for other regimes. This is partly due to the presence of the church, with its own autonomous courts and rules. It is also due to the late unification of Italy and the historically weak central government. As a result, respectable Italian judges who were not at all mafioso have been found to make sympathetic remarks about how mafia killings are just a sort of free-enterprise private death penalty for violating internal norms. As the author puts it, it's not that the Italian state was unable to subdue the mafia, it's that it never consistently tried.
As the title hints, the author's thesis is that the mafia, fundamentally, is in the business of dispute resolution and private protection. As the author takes pains to show, this protection isn't simply "protection" in the sense of extortion -- you do [often] get the genuine article. Sometimes this has socially positive cast to it -- the mafia really do suppress many kinds of crime in Sicily. More often, though, the protection the mafia offer is protection from competition. For example, the Palermo fish market -- one of the major fish markets in a major maritime region -- for a long time had only a handful of middlemen. Potential new entrants were advised that entering the business would be hazardous to their health. Similarly, if you want to do a construction project in mafia territory, you not only make direct payments to them, but must use their approved suppliers and subcontractors. The mafia-protected agents are sometimes family members, often not.
The author displays a somewhat excessive degree of essentialization -- he acknowledges that the mafia have a major role in, e.g., drug smuggling but assures the reader that this is merely a side business, or an internalized customer, not the core of what they do. I'm not sure this distinction is meaningful, but I'm mostly persuaded of his core claim that protection, forced cartelization and so forth is central to the mafia in a way that, say, bootlegging is not.
A question the author raises, but doesn't answer, is how the mafia compares to a government, a political machine, or a feudal aristocracy -- all of which also offer protection, which often claim an exclusive territory, and sometimes use coercion to enforce their will.
A few other things that caught my eye -- the Sicilian mafia is a phenomenon of _western_ Sicily and always has been. The author exhibits maps of "mafia activity" from the 1870s, which are largely similar to maps of the same, from a century later. Palermo is a mafia town, Syracuse isn't.
The author's explanation is that in the 1860s and 70s, there was a great deal of tumult in Sicily as the pre-unification aristocracy was dis-established, a great deal of church and customary property was put onto the market, and cash-crop agriculture took off. The result in the west was that the new farmers and businesses started hiring toughs who coalesced into the mafia. In eastern Sicily, the existing elites were a bit better established and were able to hang on and exclude mafia-like societies.
The word "mafia" is etymologically obscure. It seems that the collective noun and organization name is a back-formation from mafioso, which was in circulation meaning "swagger", with overtones of fearlessness, pride, and enterprising. There was a very popular 1863 play "I mafiusi di la Vicaria" about a prison gang with mafia-like characteristics -- and this seems to have popularized the term throughout Italy.
The real mafia often borrow from fictional depictions -- the author reports a real mafia wedding in Sicily where the organizers decided that the sound track from The Godfather was the ideal music. Likewise, a horse's head in somebody's bed was a literary invention that was later deployed by real mafiosi. However, similar gestures go back well before Puzzo's depiction; e.g. finding a dead fish left in a locked car, having one's pets killed, etc.
The mafia don't have good ways to describe themselves. The name "mafia" is distinctly a term by and for outsiders. As the literary depictions often have it, the insiders talk about "cosa nostra" --
"this thing of ours." It's not a proper noun -- it's a sign that there is a vagueness, an unavoidable and involuntary vagueness, about exactly what it is that the mafia are doing. Sometimes they say "la stessa cosa" -- "the same thing."
The Italian judiciary has historically been relatively soft on the mafia. More than elsewhere, Italian jurisprudence and judicial culture doesn't expect the law of the government to be the only rules -- there is an acknowledged role for other regimes. This is partly due to the presence of the church, with its own autonomous courts and rules. It is also due to the late unification of Italy and the historically weak central government. As a result, respectable Italian judges who were not at all mafioso have been found to make sympathetic remarks about how mafia killings are just a sort of free-enterprise private death penalty for violating internal norms. As the author puts it, it's not that the Italian state was unable to subdue the mafia, it's that it never consistently tried.
June 19, 2017
The Sicilian Mafia provides a theoretical framework for studying the mafia (specifically noting that the good that the mafia produces is protection) and a reasonable amount of evidence to back up the theory. This book is littered with the economics of industrial organization from the role of asymmetric information in mafia contracting to why some vertical integration of the drug was required but for the most part the organization of the drug trade was relatively diffuse. The discussion and evidence relating to reputation and transferability of it is useful in understanding issues of branding. Gambetta evidence comes from personal interviews and police and court reports, as well as secondary source material.
Favorite parts of the book: the chapters on ordered and disordered markets were wonderful chapters on the organization of specific markets, such as the fruit and vegetable markets in Palermo and the organization of theft territories.
Least favorite part: Gambetta can often get wrapped up too much in source material, and often the material is merely provided without cleanly relating it back to the theoretical framework.
Those who liked this would also enjoy the Social Order of the Underworld.
Favorite parts of the book: the chapters on ordered and disordered markets were wonderful chapters on the organization of specific markets, such as the fruit and vegetable markets in Palermo and the organization of theft territories.
Least favorite part: Gambetta can often get wrapped up too much in source material, and often the material is merely provided without cleanly relating it back to the theoretical framework.
Those who liked this would also enjoy the Social Order of the Underworld.
July 10, 2021
One of those books Mafia scholars "must" read, because it sets one up to understand a phenomenon within the scholarship of seeing Mafia groups as businesses or enterprises instead of as a sociological phenomenon. Gambetta's main idea, that mafiosi are defined by their primary function as vendors of private protection, turns out to be somewhat circular in nature. If a mafiosi appears to be in some other line of work, whether it's bookmaking or narcotics traffic, Gambetta interprets these other lines as secondary to the mafioso's protection racket, protecting his own illegal business. An interesting thought experiment, but ultimately an unconvincing one.
February 1, 2024
Este libro habla de la mafia desde el punto de vista lógico, como si fuera una empresa, que se guía por sus necesidades, sus contactos, su forma de funcionar, etc.
Lo he dejado después de 100 páginas porque me ha resultado demasiado técnico, tanto que se me ha hecho muy pesado y al final ya lo iba leyendo casi en diagonal. Casi sería digno de tesis doctoral.
Sólo lo recomiendo para quien quiera hacer estudios serios y completos sobre el tema, pero no para leer un libro a nivel de entretenimiento o aprendizaje fácil. Un servidor, insisto, no lo ha disfrutado.
Lo he dejado después de 100 páginas porque me ha resultado demasiado técnico, tanto que se me ha hecho muy pesado y al final ya lo iba leyendo casi en diagonal. Casi sería digno de tesis doctoral.
Sólo lo recomiendo para quien quiera hacer estudios serios y completos sobre el tema, pero no para leer un libro a nivel de entretenimiento o aprendizaje fácil. Un servidor, insisto, no lo ha disfrutado.
June 11, 2024
It doesn't mention the new mafia from Messina, operating in the northern cities... sadly I and a few others had the pleasure of receiving threats from them, and they are generally supporters of the British mob, operating for them. Hopefully even these ones will be eradicated, but organized crime is increasing worldwide. Hopefully it will be reduced again, with the complicity of both the right and left wing parties.
January 19, 2023
Potrzebowałam zgromadzić informacje do książki którą aktualnie pisze. Znalazłam w niej wszystko co potrzebowałam a myślę że dla wtajemniczonych w temat must read
October 11, 2025
Fascinating look into a subject I otherwise wouldn't have known anything about. Bought this one used and I love that someone else marked it up with all their thoughts and points of interest as well
December 3, 2008
Boorrrring, I only reached page 180 (out of 250) before returning the book to the library. Just couldn't finish it. Written like a college thesis, this book is great if you need to research the inner workings of organized crime. Either being a mobster is extremely dull or this author has a talent for casting things in a mundane light.
January 20, 2010
A rather dry and academic approach to Mafia business. Gambetta avoids much of the sensational writings that characterize so many other Mafia books.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews