Abstract
Marco Santoro’s book proposes a remarkably broad and highly inspiring look at mafia studies. What comes to the fore in this extremely ambitious overview of various aspects of the phenomena linked to the mafia is an attempt to upgrade the mafia studies to a meta-theoretical level. At the same time, the author moves across the spectrum of dimensions of the mafia phenomenon. On one hand, it analyses a very specific case of the Sicilian Mafia. On the other hand, the author uses it as a vivid example of the essence of a wider mafia type of social organization. With regard to it, he outlines a perspective in which the concept of the mafia does not refer simply to criminal organizations but to a certain enduring aspect of social organization that does not disappear with modernization processes. It is about deep social ties that are based on personalized relationships of a strongly asymmetrical nature based on trust and secrecy. As the author argues, it is such ties emerging in the structures of many societies that are the essence of the phenomenon that is commonly referred to as the mafia. In particular, Santoro refers to the concept of ‘bund’, introduced into the sociological literature by Herman Schmalenbach. The notion translated as ‘league’, ‘alliance’, or ‘federation’ was conceived as a way of capturing specific type of social bonds that go beyond Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft versus Gesellschaft dualism.
In its first part, the book provides an analysis of the field of mafia studies in the spirit of the sociology of science of Pierre Bourdieu. Santoro distinguishes the main approaches that have prevailed in the field in subsequent periods. They include the structuralist, culturalist, and rationalist paradigms, and the weaknesses of each of them are discussed. The author is particularly polemically oriented toward the approach he calls economic. It involves understanding the mafia as an organization oriented primarily toward material profits and thus seeing it as a specific type of enterprise, obviously one operating to some degree on the basis of various informal schemes and law-breaking. Santoro is also skeptical of viewing the mafia as a criminal institution at its core with the violence as its main modus operandi. He does not deny, of course, that violence may be an important component of mafia activity, but he does not believe that it is its essential role. In opposition to these approaches (economic and criminal), Santoro sees the essence of the mafia in the role it plays in the broader political sphere. He even writes about ‘mafias as an elementary form of politics’ and draws a picture in which the mafia and state interact in numerous ways. These interactions often have a conflictual nature. However, the conflict between the mafia and the state does not take place only in the field of politics. The author emphasizes that the mafia is, in fact, very different from the state, and the state as a historical institution has never fully monopolized politics in its broader understanding. He argues that one can point to the long history of conflict between the state and other political forms, which include the mafia, along with city-states, tribes, clans, and several others. From such a point of view, emotionally loaded terms such as ‘mafia state’, which are also sometimes used in the academic literature (e.g. Magyar, 2016), can be seen as blurring important distinctions rather than providing insight into the specifics of how particular political systems function.
Indeed, in the perspective of Santoro’s book, the concept of the mafia loses its judgmental nature and becomes a relatively neutral analytical tool. In such a context, the author refers to the work of James C. Scott on forms of social or political organization that escape state control in various historical and regional contexts. Among them, he recalls concepts such as ‘hidden transcripts’ and ‘the art of not being governed by the state’. Santoro points out that the mafia also lends itself to being described by these terms and is a hybrid social structure that resists the state’s attempts to control society as a whole and the political sphere in particular. Santoro also calls in this context for a more problematized view of the state and the limits of its influence on society. In particular, he proposes that the traditional division between the private and public spheres should be problematized and criticizes the simple dualisms based on this contrast. As Santoro argues, between the state and the family or the individual, there is a space of a broadly defined political nature in which various types of hybrid structures can compete for influence. One of them may be, namely, the mafia. It is in this perspective that Santoro emphasizes the political nature of the mafia. In particular, he points out that the mafia’s activities are not usually presented by its representatives as ‘services’ as the followers of the economic paradigm in mafia studies would suggest. Instead, the basic category in which the mafia defines its activities is one of ‘gift’. To be sure, as Santoro admits, it is often a gift that cannot be refused. A gift in such a context, however, as the author suggests, should be seen as an act of political action rather than economic exchange.
There is a clear aspect of center–periphery hierarchies in Santoro’s proposed perspective. The author sees the mafia as a tool of resistance for the weak, especially dominated or marginal regions. Thus, he seems to suggest that what is often called the mafia is a kind of compensatory tool of the periphery or rather the semi-periphery, to use Immanuel Wallerstein’s language. However, the author prefers to discuss Sicily as a region at the interface of civilizations and as an arena of their conflicts. Either way, Santoro defends the mafia as a political phenomenon against the orientalist Western gaze. In a way, from being demonized from the position of the Western core of the world system. This is particularly clear when he mentions that he considered adding ‘a southern view’ as a subtitle of the book. South here would mean both the south of Italy and the Mediterranean region, but maybe also a broader perspective from beyond the Western core. At the same time, Santoro directly refers to Said’s notion of Orientalism, mentioning that Western views of the mafia unilaterally demonize it or unjustifiably reduce it to either a criminal organization or a pathological economic institution. He argues that in the Western perspective, the mafia appears as a ‘fundamentally retrograde, archaic and ignorant’ institution. At the same time, Santoro does not deny that the mafia is mainly based on pre-modern logic. As he writes, the horizon of the average mafioso is the warrior ethos so that mafia identity can be considered in opposition to bourgeois identity. A position in the mafia network is a position of status of honor, which can be placed in opposition to the contractual, economic definition of social position in modern society. However, as I mentioned, Santoro, following Herman Schmalenbach (the notion of ‘bund’) and also Michel Maffesoli (‘neotribal forms’) and Ibn Khaldūn (‘asabiyya’), distances himself from the simple opposition of pre-modern community and modern society, pointing to the timeless nature of the dense social networks in question.
Moreover, he also seems to suggest that in Western societies, such mechanisms of the functioning of parts of its political sphere and elites in general are also invariably present, though perhaps better concealed. In Western societies, in contrast to ‘Southern’ (including the Mediterranean) and ‘Eastern’ societies, they seem to be, in particular, better legitimized, sometimes built into modern institutions in a naturalized way, and above all, not demonized. Santoro mentions in this context as an example the secret services, which even in modern and democratic states must rely on the principle of secrecy and personal loyalty, which makes any control difficult. Probably more such examples could be cited, for example, by taking a closer look at the functioning of elites in Western societies. Thus, it can be said that Santoro’s book contains great inspirational potential for various types of broader inquiry and research, particularly in looking for neo-tribal and informal aspects of the functioning of selected social spheres in modern Western societies.
Santoro’s proposed meta-analysis of the mafia may also be inspiring for studies of other regions of the world, including Eastern and Central Europe. The author himself lists in the final section of his book several examples of mafias from around the world, including Japan and Russia. How he presents the Russian case, however, seems to me to be a less than successful demonstration of the potential of his approach. This is because he largely writes of criminal networks originating in the late Soviet Union and its vast network of prisons and camps. These are often referred to as the mafia, but Santoro draws attention only to their criminal dimension, failing to take advantage of the potential of the approach he outlines. Meanwhile, the ties that connected criminal organizations in the USSR and Russia with the world of politics seem worth noting, and not only in the corruption dimension. After all, as many authors have pointed out, criminal organizations can be seen as partly tools of the authorities by means of which they pursued very different goals, including those that went significantly beyond the economic sphere, which fits well with the approach suggested by Santoro. Among the underexplored but vivid examples are the ruling militias in the so-called ‘people’s republics’ in Donetsk and Luhansk established by Russia. These are hybrid organizations, having the aspect of regional authorities on one hand while being largely criminal groups on the other. Going back earlier in history, one can point out that the communist parties themselves had (and have in the countries where they still operate) strong aspects of the mafia in the broader sense of the term proposed by Santoro. Despite their bureaucratic dimension, they had and have, especially at the level of their elites, precisely the aspects of a bond of brotherhood, loyalty, and strict secrecy. As we may remember from the old school of Sovietology, more important than formal positions in the Communist Party was the informal hierarchy that was revealed, for example, in the order in which the party leadership entered the stands at conventions or parades. A very similar example of a procession revealing with its order the hierarchy of the mafia organization in Sicily is given by Santoro himself in his book. In this context, the sometimes underestimated division that existed and still exists in communist states is also worth noting, one between state structures and communist party structures. Many analysts marginalize its importance as a rather declarative, formal division in countries where all power belongs to one party anyway. In light of Santoro’s considerations, however, it is worth taking a closer look at this division because it may be more significant than it appears. The party, though dominant over the state, would here nevertheless correspond to the mafia essence of the elite, with its bund-type principles. However, for several reasons, which include aspirations to be modern, party could not fully replace a rational bureaucratic apparatus in any of the communist states. As many researchers point out in contemporary Russia, the former party’s power has shifted to the elites of secret services and related hybrid structures. They, too, are separated from the regular state structures by a rather clear boundary. The state administration may be strongly corrupt, but its basic operation logic is highly bureaucratic, procedural, and thus relatively depersonalized. In contrast, inside the power-controlling network of elites with strong ties to the secret services, the rules of close social ties that Santoro described as the basis of the mafia world seem to be at work, including the principles of brotherhood, mutual support, and loyalty. Lack of loyalty, in turn, is punished by show executions, which are carried out at home and abroad first of all against people who were part of the trusted circle of the informal power network. As commentators on Russian politics point out, these executions, often carried out with sophisticated technical means, are planned to leave clear clues of their authorship. Another feature of the Communist Party and now the power elite and secret services in Russia is also worth noting. Similar to the classic mafia, they offer the gift of protection, in particular, protection from various abuses of power and criminal organizations, which they often control indirectly. In particular, they operate their own system of contact with the public, for example, in the form of reception offices where one can file a semi-formal complaint about the injustice of state institutions, corruption, abuse of power by high officials, or ordinary crime that cannot be dealt with the support from the state legal system.
In my research in small Polish municipalities in the 1990s, a characteristic theme was residents’ complaints about the lack of instances to which one could complain of serious abuses or ask for necessary assistance (Zarycki, 2017). This was because, until 1989, the local communist party committees played such a role. Although the party was usually viewed very critically, there was a realization that one could come to its local secretary as a last resort for help. He did not guarantee a solution to any problem, especially since his power was semi-formal and he represented an authoritarian power elite. For various reasons, however, he could choose to provide such help as he could, through informal channels of party structure, take the complaint to a higher level to those capable of forcing local state structures to even informally change their decisions. This could have meant real help, a solution to the problem. After 1989, with the disappearance of the Communist Party and its local branches, such a semi-formal power structure disappeared, which for residents was often a change for the worse. This was because, a sense of being left alone in the face of often heartless state officials, local cliques, or even criminal organizations often emerged in local communities. At the same time, this feeling could be rarely expressed on the broader political scene given its politically incorrect nature.
My example was intended to illustrate how the perspective outlined by Santoro can serve as valuable inspiration for the study of communist parties both in the past and present. Attempts to understand their essence as social phenomena are constantly being made by successive researchers, but none of the proposals yet seems fully convincing. In particular, one can cite the recent monumental volume by Yuri Slezkine ‘The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution’ (Slezkine, 2017) in which he traces the fate of the first generation of the Bolshevik elite ruling the Soviet Union. In an attempt to explain the specifics of its nature, Slezkine refers to the concept of a sect. However, as it seems, the use of the conceptual apparatus proposed by Santoro could have produced much more convincing results. Arguably, there are many more similar research areas in which the use of the tools, notions, and examples proposed by Santoro could prove very productive.