This ground-breaking book offers a deep and original analysis of the Mafia - in particular Cosa
Nostra - as a distinct form of politics. Marco Santoro breaks with criminal and economic
approaches which see the Mafia as an industry of private protection and rationally calculating
wealth accumulation. Instead he argues that it represents an alternative way of organizing
political relations the exercise of power and the struggle for prestige. Nor is this a
distortion or failure of the modern Western state based on the rule of law: the Mafia is best
understood as an older alternative tradition of politics a distinctly Southern institutional
arrangement of social life focused on personal ties and obligations. Today the Mafia still
thrives among subaltern classes and in regions that the modern state has not yet incorporated
as a conservative counter-politics of prestige. Pivotal to understanding this world is a
cultural sociology of the Mafia offering the tools and concepts necessary to penetrate the
symbolism and structures of Mafia life. Blending diverse theoretical strands with folk sources
and the voices of Mafiosi themselves Santoro develops a political theory of the Mafia
shedding new light on this captivating global and remarkably resilient phenomenon.
