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Acknowledgements

This book has been long in the making. In some form, it started in the late 1980s as an undergraduate thesis (tesi di laurea) under the guidance of Lorenzo Ornaghi and the late Gianfranco Miglio at the Catholic University of Milan. My ideas on mafia politics began with their teachings and provocative ideas regarding politics and theory. Moving from political theory to sociology by way of political and institutional history gave me many opportunities to encounter other approaches and meet many people. I would like to remember here the late Cesare Mozzarelli for giving me a sense of what the métier d’historien can be, and Marzio Barbagli for showing me what good empirical sociology should be, and what it cannot be.

A book published in Italian in 2007 (La voce del padrino, a title which plays with ‘His Master’s Voice’ formula in ways that can work only in Italian) was a first major step in my research on mafia politics, to which this book is indebted for Chapter 6. I would like to thank Gianfranco Morosato and Sandro Mazzadra for making that publication possible.

In the years since then, many colleagues and friends have contributed to further shaping and refining my ideas, as well as offering venues for me to present and discuss them. Obviously, I cannot mention everyone, but here I would like to thank a few of the many who have helped pave the way to the publication of this book.

Thanks to Jeff Alexander for inviting me to the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology in 2008 to present my early ruminations on mafia culture structures, and to Philip Smith for reading and commenting on an early paper presented at a seminar on culture and power organized by Fredrik Engelstadt and Wendy Griswold in a wonderful place on a fiord near Oslo in December 2007. Thanks to Harrison C. White for our discussion with his students on the mafia while briefly visiting Columbia’s Department of Sociology and attending his lessons on language and society in 2008. Thanks to Randall Collins for inviting me to Las Vegas in 2011 to present an early version of the argument developed in this book (under the title of Chapter 7) at the annual Congress of the American Sociological Association, and to George Derluguian for organizing the Presidential Panel on mafias where I tried it out. Thanks to Christian Frankel and Paul du Gay for inviting me to the Copenhagen Business School in that same year to present and discuss an early version of Chapter 6.

Thank you, Cristiana Olcese and Mike Savage, for inviting me to the London School of Economics in 2013 to present my ideas on mafia and aesthetics (to be developed in my next book, hopefully) at a conference and then as a guest in the Sociology Department. Thanks to Nando dalla Chiesa for inviting me many times to the Summer School on organized crime and mafias that he has been directing at the University of Milan, offering a venue to discuss my ideas with colleagues and people from the antimafia movement (who usually disliked them). Last, but not least, thanks to Gisèle Sapiro for welcoming me to the EHESS in Paris in 2015 to present my research on the mafia as an invited scholar, and to Deborah Puccio-Den for discussing it in a dedicated seminar during my stay.

My colleagues at the former Department of Communication, University of Bologna, also deserve thanks for their discussion of a very early presentation of Chapter 5. Thanks to Claudio Paolucci for his support in that early phase. Fabio Dei has been supporting me more recently, also contributing anthropological references and criticism of my argument about the place of the gift in mafia politics.

Among colleagues and friends who read and commented on early versions of my argument from a scholarly perspective alien to mafia studies, I recall with pleasure Peter Bearman, Johan Heilbron, George Steinmetz and Alessandro Duranti. The late Alessandro Pizzorno was an insightful commentator of some early writings and an inspiring presence while writing this whole book.

Roberta Sassatelli, Monica Sassatelli and Jasper Chalcraft helped develop the book proposal and put it into good English. Thank you for your help.

Umberto Santino and Anna Puglisi of the Centro Siciliano di Documentazione Giuseppe Impastato made my Palermo trips stimulating and productive. Researchers on the mafia will be ever grateful to you. Cirus Rinaldi and Giovanni Frazzica also contributed to my enjoyment of that strange city during my time there. Thanks to Barbara Grüning for helping with any German translations that came up and for giving me a sense of Italian and even mafia life in comparison with German social life, especially in the DDR. Federica Cabras made me aware of the Nigerian mafia and what young scholars can do while studying young victims of that kind of mafia. Federica Timeto helped me to better understand Sicily and Sicilians, while generously hosting me in Palermo with her cats, showing me films, books, pictures, places and much else. Marco Solaroli and Matteo Gerli helped as research assistants in many professional and friendly ways.

The list of colleagues deserving mention would be too long, but I want to specifically recall here the following: Raimondo Catanzaro, Umberto Santino, Nando dalla Chiesa, Alberto Vannucci, Monica Massari, Maurizio Catino, Federico Varese (who also read and commented on Chapter 3: thank you, Federico!), Felia Allum, Filippo Sabetti, Rocco Sciarrone, Alessandra Dino, Lucia Michelutti, Damiano Palano, Filippo Barbera. Barbara Carnevali deserves a special mention for reading and supporting an early statement of Chapter 2’s ontological argument. I haven’t been so generous with her symmetrical requests of reading, and for this I’m still apologizing.

I would thank Diego Gambetta whose work on the mafia I discovered while writing my undergraduate thesis and attending a seminar he gave in Milan in 1987. His harsh reaction to a critical note of mine published a few years later indirectly fostered my research on the mafia to this day (an exemplary case of unintentional effects of intentional actions, I would say).

Thanks to Richard Burket for your precious and professional help in making my English correct and more readable and much shorter, and to Jonathan Skerrett at Polity for patiently awaiting my chapters over all these years, offering suggestions and encouragement: I’m sure I would never have finished without your gentle but determined spurs.

In the many years I have been working on this book (very slowly at the beginning and then quickly in the last two years), my personal life has been animated by many changes and challenges. Thank you, Roberta, with whom this book project started (as did many other projects, including the biggest one): without you I doubt I would ever have thought about it. Thank you, Federica, for giving me the pathos, flavour, generosity and love of your detested Sicily, as well as a clear idea of what feminism and anti-speciesism may be in sentimental affairs. The Minotaur is still with me! Thank you, Federica, for your critical but passionate approach to mafia studies, your very special antimafia militancy, and your attitude towards life. Battiato has gone, but I always remember you with deep affection. Thank you, Barbara: you have been so close to me so many times and in so many ways in all these years that no words can do justice. Finally, thank you, Chiara: your grace and love is a wonderful ‘free’ gift (it does exist, indeed!). Time will tell us where le vent nous portera.

My son has been a source of joy and personal growth in all these years. I dedicate this book to you, Riccardo. Grazie per sopportare un padre che ti tormenta da quando avevi nove anni per farti vedere Salvatore Giuliano. Ancora non sono riuscito a convincerti. Un giorno lo guarderemo insieme, ne sono certo.

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