Extract
[...] But mediation could also extend beyond the mafia itself, to the political and economic life of a territory; mafiosi then appear, paradoxically, as arbitrators to whom citizens can turn in interpersonal disputes. In fact, these methods paint, behind, the portrait of real empirical assimilations between traditional mafias and Latin American narco-traffickers in their economic and political dimension. On these two points, the groups are comparable and exert strong pressures on existing and legitimate systems, which these criminal organizations combat, while paradoxically promising to restore. [...]
[...] Thus, 'today in the collective Italian imagination, organized crime of the mafia type represents a non-problem'11 », for example. But the fact that 'the economic and financial dimension of the mafia, and more particularly the infiltration of criminal gangs into legitimate economic activities, continues to be one of the most obscure themes'12 » ; that's why the imaginaries are ultimately solicited around values that are certainly, empirically invisible13, which, however, do not prevent them from presiding over the criminal activities of these groups. [...]
[...] In what ways do the Latin American drug cartels, like traditional mafias, fall into the category of organized crime groups and thus present eloquent similarities in an analysis of transnational crime? The first part of the assignment is devoted to identifying a series of representations related to the establishment of values (or axiological dimension) that structures the mafia imaginaries of Latin American drug cartels as a whole Subsequently, the practicality of the actions carried out by these groups coincides with empirical methods observed in traditional mafias, beyond the simple resolution of disputes, and which make them compatible with a processual analysis of the mafia organization; this is the subject of the second part of the assignment (II). [...]
[...] If the construction of the imaginaries of drug cartels and traditional mafias can be related it is also in the methods of dispute resolution that the possibility of a perspective on the two types of structure is revealed A. The imaginaries of drug cartels and traditional mafias Like traditional mafias, drug cartels are imbued with a particular imaginary that ties them to a certain mythography. Prefect Mordini in Naples at the end of the 19th century, is interested in this imaginary of the camorra, the Neapolitan mafia, by asking 'questions about culture, customs, sexual preferences, tattoos or inclinations in terms of criminal modalities'10 ». This imaginary is not fixed. [...]
[...] Jean-François Gayraud evokes in these terms 'the essence of a mafia': 'The essence of a mafia is rather of a nature biological: adaptability, mobility, flexibility, dynamism, regeneration. Mafias are approaching amorphous, protoplasmic entities, rather headless and always mutating [ . That's why a mafia is not of an organizational type stricto sensu but rather functional6 » This functionalist definition of the mafia rather than formalist, highlighting the idea of plasticity and adaptability, allows to grasp a mafioso structure in a dynamic process. [...]
