" Mafia", as an informal or general term, is often used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the Sicilian Mafia, to the Italian-American Mafia, or to other organized crime groups from Italy. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of disputes between criminals, as well as the organization and enforcement of illicit agreements between criminals through violence.[: "The Mafia's principal activities are settling disputes among other criminals, protecting them against each other's cheating, and organizing and overseeing illicit agreements, often involving many agents, such as illicit cartel agreements in otherwise legal industries. Mafia-like groups offer a solution of sorts to the trust problem by playing the role of a government for the underworld and supplying protection to people involved in illegal markets ordeals. They may play that role poorly, sometimes veering toward extortion rather than genuine protection, but they do play it."] Mafias often engage in secondary activities such as gambling, , drug-trafficking, prostitution, and fraud.
The term Mafia was originally applied to the Sicilian Mafia. Since then, the term has expanded to encompass other organizations of similar practices and objectives, e.g. "the Russian mafia" or "the Japanese mafia". The term was coined by the press and is informal; the criminal organizations themselves have their own names (e.g. the Sicilian Mafia and the related American mafia refer to their organizations as "Cosa nostra"; the "Japanese mafia" calls itself "Ninkyō dantai", but is more commonly known as " Yakuza" by the public; "Russian mafia" groups often call themselves "Russian mafia").
When used alone and without any qualifier, "Mafia" or "the Mafia" typically refers to either the Sicilian Mafia or the Italian-American Mafia and sometimes Italian organized crime in general (e.g., Camorra, 'Ndrangheta, etc.).
Today the 'Ndrangheta, originating in the southern Italian region of Calabria, is widely considered the richest and most powerful Mafia in the world.[ Modifiche agli articoli 416-bis e 416-ter del codice penale in materia di associazioni di tipo mafioso e di scambio elettorale politico-mafioso, Disegno di legge, Senato della Repubblica, 20 May 2010] Italy's highest court of last resort, the Supreme Court of Cassation, had ruled similarly on 30 March 2010.
Etymology
The word
Mafia (; ) derives from the Sicilian adjective
mafiusu, which, roughly translated, means 'swagger', but can also be translated as 'boldness' or
. In reference to a man, mafiusu
(mafioso
in Italian) in 19th century Sicily signified 'fearless', 'enterprising', and 'proud', according to scholar Diego Gambetta.[This etymology is based on the books ]Che cosa è la mafia?
by Gaetano Mosca, Mafioso
by Gaia Servadio, The Sicilian Mafia
by Diego Gambetta, Mafia & Mafiosi
by Henner Hess, and Cosa Nostra
by John Dickie (see Books below). In reference to a woman, however, the feminine-form adjective mafiusa'' means 'beautiful' or 'attractive'.
Because Sicily was an Islamic emirate from 831 to 1072, Mafia may have come to Sicilian through Arabic, although the word's origins are uncertain. Possible Arabic roots of the word include:
-
(معفي) = exempted. In Islamic law, jizya is the yearly tax imposed on non-Muslims residing in Muslim lands, and people who pay it are "exempted" from prosecution.
-
màha = quarry, cave; especially the mafie, the caves in the region of Marsala, which acted as hiding places for persecuted Muslims and later served other types of refugees, in particular Giuseppe Garibaldi's "Redshirts" after their embarkment on Sicily in 1860 in the struggle for Italian unification.
[According to , cave in Arabic literary writing is Maqtaa hagiar, while in popular Arabic it is pronounced as Mahias hagiar, and then "from Maqtaa (Mahias) = Mafia, that is cave, hence the name (ma)qotai, quarrymen, stone-cutters, that is, Mafia" (Loschiavo 1962: 27-30). See: Fabrizio Fioretti (2011), Il termine "mafia", Sveučilište Jurja Dobrile u Puli.][Mosca, Che cosa è la mafia?, p. 51][Hess, Mafia & Mafiosi, pp. 1-3][Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia, pp. 259-261.][Coluccello, Challenging the Mafia Mystique, p.3]
-
(مهياص) = aggressive boasting, bragging
[
]
-
(مرفوض) = rejected, considered to be the most plausible derivation; developed into marpiuni (swindler) to marpiusu and finally mafiusu.
[Lupo, History of the Mafia, p. 282 quoting Lo Monaco (1990), Lingua nostra.]
-
(معافى) = safety, protection
[
]
-
(معافر) = the name of an Arab tribe that ruled Palermo.
[ The local peasants imitated these Arabs and as a result the tribe's name entered the popular lexicon. The word Mafia was then used to refer to the defenders of Palermo during the Sicilian Vespers against rule of the Capetian House of Anjou on 30 March 1282.]
-
(مفيء), meaning 'place of shade'. The word shade meaning refuge or derived from refuge.
The public's association of the word with the criminal secret society was perhaps inspired by the 1863 play I mafiusi di la Vicaria ('The Mafiosi of the Vicaria') by Giuseppe Rizzotto and Gaspare Mosca.[Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia, p. 136.] The play had great success throughout Italy. Soon after, the use of the term Mafia began appearing in the Italian state's early reports on the phenomenon. The word made its first official appearance in 1865 in a report by the prefect of Palermo .[Lupo, The History of the Mafia , p. 3.]
Definitions
The term
Mafia was never officially used by Sicilian mafiosi, who prefer to refer to their organization as "
Cosa Nostra". Nevertheless, it is typically by comparison to the groups and families that comprise the
Sicilian Mafia that other criminal groups are given the label.
Giovanni Falcone, an anti-Mafia judge murdered by the Sicilian Mafia in 1992, objected to the conflation of the term
Mafia with organized crime in general:
Mafias as private protection firms
Scholars such as
Diego Gambetta and Leopoldo Franchetti have characterized the Sicilian Mafia as a cartel of private protection firms whose primary business is protection racketeering: they use their fearsome reputation for violence to deter people from swindling, robbing, or competing with those who pay them for protection. For many businessmen in Sicily, they provide an essential service when they cannot rely on the police and judiciary to enforce their contracts and protect their properties from thieves (this is often because they are engaged in
black market deals).
[Diego Gambetta (1993). The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection]
Scholars have observed that many other societies around the world have criminal organizations of their own that provide the same sort of protection service. For instance, in Russia, after the collapse of communism, the state security system had all but collapsed, forcing businessmen to hire criminal gangs to enforce their contracts and protect their properties from thieves. These gangs are popularly called "the Russian mafia" by foreigners, but they prefer to go by the term Russian mafia.
In his analysis of the Sicilian Mafia, Gambetta provided the following hypothetical scenario to illustrate the Mafia's function in the Sicilian economy. Suppose a grocer wants to buy meat from a butcher without paying sales tax to the government. Because this is a black market deal, neither party can take the other to court if the other cheats. The grocer is afraid that the butcher will sell him rotten meat. The butcher is afraid that the grocer will not pay him. If the butcher and the grocer cannot get over their mistrust and refuse to trade, they would both miss out on an opportunity for profit. Their solution is to ask the local mafioso to oversee the transaction, in exchange for a fee proportional to the value of the transaction but below the legal tax. If the butcher cheats the grocer by selling rotten meat, the mafioso will punish the butcher. If the grocer cheats the butcher by not paying on time and in full, the mafioso will punish the grocer. Punishment might take the form of a violent assault or vandalism against property. The grocer and the butcher both fear the mafioso, so each honors their side of the bargain. All three parties profit.
Mafia-type organizations under Italian law
Introduced by Pio La Torre, article 416-bis of the Italian Penal Code defines a Mafia-type association (Italian:
associazione di tipo mafioso) as one where "those belonging to the association exploit the potential for intimidation which their membership gives them, and the compliance and omertà which membership entails and which lead to the committing of crimes, the direct or indirect assumption of management or control of financial activities, concessions, permissions, enterprises and public services for the purpose of deriving profit or wrongful advantages for themselves or others".
[Seindal, Mafia: money and politics in Sicily, p. 20]
International
Mafia-proper can refer to either:
In Italy
Italian criminal organizations include:
-
Banda della Magliana and Mafia Capitale, in Lazio
-
Basilischi, in Basilicata
-
Camorra, in Campania
-
Cosa Nostra in Sicily
-
Mala del Brenta, in Veneto
-
'Ndrangheta, in Calabria,
[ Il senatore Carlo Giovanardi difendeva un'azienda di amici che era colpita da interdittiva antimafia, L'Espresso, 4 maggio 2017] widely considered the richest and most powerful Mafia in the world
-
Sacra Corona Unita, in Apulia
-
Società foggiana, an offshoot of Sacra Corona Unita
-
Stidda, in Sicily
In other countries
See also
-
-
List of Chinese criminal organizations
Notes and references
Sources
-
Albanese, Jay S., Das, Dilip K. & Verma, Arvind (2003). Organized Crime: World Perspectives. Prentice Hall. .
-
Coluccello, Rino (2016). Challenging the Mafia Mystique: Cosa Nostra from Legitimisation to Denunciation, Palgrave Macmillan. .
-
-
-
-
-
Hess, Henner (1998). Mafia & Mafiosi: Origin, Power and Myth. London: Hurst & Co Publishers. .
-
Lo Schiavo, Giuseppe Guido (1964), Cento anni di mafia, Rome: Vito Bianco Editore.
-
Lupo, Salvatore (2009), The History of the Mafia, New York: Columbia University Press. .
-
Gaetano Mosca (1901/2015). Che cosa è la mafia?, Messina: Il Grano, (See Full text in Italian and the English translation for a background on the publication).
-
Mosca, Gaetano (1901/2014). "What is Mafia", M&J, 2014. Translation of the book "Che cosa è la Mafia", Giornale degli Economisti, July 1901, pp. 236–62. .
-
Paoli, Letizia (2003). Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. .
-
Seindal, René (1998). Mafia: Money and Politics in Sicily, 1950-1997. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. .
-
Servadio, Gaia (1976). Mafioso: a history of the Mafia from its origins to the present day. London: Secker & Warburg. .
-
Wang, Peng (2017). The Chinese Mafia: Organized Crime, Corruption, and Extra-Legal Protection. Oxford: Oxford University Press. .
