THE IDEOLOGICAL DESCRIPTIONS OF THE CAMORRA: what do we really talk about, when we talk about the Camorra?

Criminal Issue, Southern Issue, Historical-Capitalistic System Project and state of the research

Alessandro Cozzutto PhD student in Political Science and International Relations Department of Political Studies, University of Turin (Italy) Visiting student at the Fernand Braudel Center, Binghamton University, NY ale.cozzutto@gmail.com http://www.dotduepuntozero.org

The present research work aims to analyze the description of the Camorra provided by the experts who are directly and daily engaged in both the study and the contrast of the organized crime based in Campania: is their analysis of the persistence and recent empowerment of the Camorra in conflict with the way politics and media describe this criminal phenomenon? And what are the historical premises and political consequences of such a conflict? After a long period of analysis of the existing specialized literature, I have spent a period of my research in Naples and in the South of Italy, to collect a series of qualitative interviews to privileged observers as the experts I have mentioned before (scholars, journalists, novelists, judges, politicians and activists). What I was looking for were empirical qualitative data which could enlighten my doubts about what the Camorra was, how we could know that and how we could communicate it. My questions were about the profound reasons which establish a conflict between State and clans: is it a matter of how clans activities affect local and national economy? Is it because it generates violence, ecological disasters, violation of civil and political rights, is it because it kills innocent people? Is it because of its intrinsic unfairness? Is it because no alternative power can challenge the state monopoly of coercion? Is it because the historical capitalism distinguishes between honest and dishonest profit? And, on the contrary, cui bono? What are the utilitarian functions which organized crime performs in a trans-national economy? Who, among those who don't belong to any clan, benefits from the traffic of drug and prostitution, who gets the electoral votes the Camorre control, who takes profit from the violation of the working and environmental legislation? Who gets an improper remuneration from the professionalization of the fight against it? What I have been trying to do was to deconstruct the traditional categories of analysis of organized crime, to identify pros and contras (and relative beneficiaries) behind an (un)effective contrast of the Camorre. What I was looking for was a direct (second-order) observation which could define a clear framework for my research but, at the same time, give me back the complexity that the technology of dissemination had reduced (Luhmann, 1985; Id., 1988; Belmonte, 1997).

1. The research problem

1.1 Object of the study: what is the Camorra? The present research work talks about the Camorra. But it's not about the Camorra. It's about the ideology which legitimates the exercise of power by the Italian State, within the context of an information society, assuming Luhmann's intuition about communication as a more effective unity of analysis than social action. Why studying legality through the forms of communication of criminality? Because, as Schmitt suggests, the normal only exists for its own exception. The normal proves nothing, the exception proves everything (Schmitt, 1988: 25). The system of organized crime rooted in Campania is a case which fits in perfectly within such a framework: it's criminal, an exception to the idea of legality that has to be defeated to restore normality; it has attracted huge attention by the national media system during the last years, in particular after Gomorrah; the Campanian social environment historically claimed a natural attitude to communication, reflected by the camorristi taste to ostentation, with respect to other criminal organizations (Sales-Ravveduto, 2006). But how to make operational the empirical analysis of such a tension between normality and exception? Does this tension really exists? And how can we investigate the forms of communication about these organizations? The problem of what we know about the Camorra calls for what the historical and theoretical foundations of this knowledge are, in particular when discussing the political consequences of the descriptions of it. 1.1.1 The historical context The Camorra is a criminal phenomenon whose historical origins have been profoundly analyzed, although such a study cannot be considered as finished (Barbagallo, 2010). It's a fact that thousands of people have been killed by members of clans which belong to what it's commonly called the Camorra. But the phenomenon seems to be so heterogeneous to make analysts outline the importance of referring to the clans as Camorre, the Italian plural form for

Camorra (Lamberti in Gribaudi, 2009: 484; Sales, 1993: 162). Camorra is then the label which have been applied to a number of illegal, illicit and criminal phenomenon which developed among the plebs in Naples since the 19th century, in a city whose new bourgeoisie had failed to obtain the liberal reforms originated in France (Cuoco, 1913). The transformation of those activities, from a goal of survival to structured organizations, cannot be easily collocated before the unification of Italy in 1860, nor immediately after Garibaldi's triumphal entry in the ex-capital of the Bourbon kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Galasso, 1978: 201). Nevertheless the word Camorra was used before 1860 and mentioned in a 1863 national law, called Pica, Procedure for the repression of the brigandage and the camorristi in the infected provinces (Sales-Ravveduto, 2006: 12). Did it indicate an associated, though disorganized, minority of violent criminals, without written laws or formal rituals (Alongi, 1890)? Or did it stand for a honored society (Caggiano, 1908: 53), as reaction to an endemic lack of work (Id.: 14)? Was it an association of men of the people, corrupted and violent, who exerted racket by intimating vicious and cowards (Monnier, 1965: 7), without a written code as nobody was able to read (Id: 22-23)? Did two camorre, one in favor and one in opposition to legal power, exist (Id: 53-54)? The primitive history of the Camorra is a confused semantic mix of terms such as Bella Societ Riformata, mammasantissima, barattolo (the product of racketing), lazzarone (former member of a clan?), zumpata (the jump made to hit the adversary with a knife during a duel), which make the phenomenon appear as the folk outcome of the naturally degraded environment of the plebs. But in 1900 a parliamentary court of inquiry, with senator Giuseppe Saredo as president, is set up to investigate the connections among the different social strata in Naples. Its conclusions represent a strong j'accuse to the ruling class of the city: The worst consequence, in our opinion, was to have made the Camorra bigger, letting it get into all strata of public life and among all social community, instead of destroying it, as free institutions had to suggest, or at least instead of circumscribing it, to where it came from, that is the lowest social grounds (Saredo in Comm Parl Antimafia, 1994: 22). The Saredo inquiry put the legitimating bases of the first Italian maxi-trial (1906-1912), whose judiciary truth was built in order to guarantee the total dismantlement of organized crime in Naples (Marmo in Marmo-Musella, 2003). After that, and in particular thanks to the fascist propaganda, the

phenomenon called Camorra seemed to vanish until 1943, which the historian Marcella Marmo regards as the year zero for the study of the contemporary Camorra (Marmo in Gribaudi, 2009: 33). After the Second World War the frontiers between legal, illegal and criminal are absorbed by the phenomenon of smuggling, widely tolerated by the institutions as only mean of sustainability for large part of the population (Brancaccio in Gribaudi, 2009; Guarino in Gribaudi, 2009), but also as consequence of its creative art of getting along (Anselmo, 2009). As long as the emergencies of post-war vanished, a criminal structure definitely emerged. This organizational upgrade took profit from the expertise developed thanks to the smuggling and the personal contact with Sicilian mafiosi, which the Italian State sent to a forced stay in Campania, to prevent them from causing problems in Sicily (Sales, 1993: 144). The end of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties see the quick rise and very quick fall of O' Profess, the boss Raffaele Cutolo, and his New Organized Camorra (NCO), the most popular, massive and structured clan of Camorra ever. Such rise had been possible in particular thanks to the explosion of the national and international consummation of drugs (heroin), which had multiplied the traditional criminal incomes deriving from racket, smuggling, prostitution, gambling, etc. Cutolo's extraordinary success, ambitions and greed made him conflict with the other clans, which formed a coalition called New Family. But also with some representatives of the State, who had asked him to facilitate the liberation of Ciro Cirillo (Sales-Barbagallo, 1990: 149; Comm Parl Antimafia, 1994: 135-136), a member of the first party in Italy and in Naples, the Democrazia Cristiana (Allum, 1975), who had been kidnapped by the Red Brigades, a radical left militant group (Tranfaglia, 1994). Cutolo's star collapsed, thanks to the coalition of his enemies (Behan, 1996:107; Galasso in Barrese, 1994: 216), the Camorre didn't. After the earthquake in Irpinia in 1980, public expenditures for the reconstruction (and their politically maneuvered assignment) became one of the biggest effortless source of money (Cirillo was regional assessor for public works, that's why he was kidnapped). The New Family, lead by Lorenzo Bardellino and Carmine Alfieri, moved the entrepreneurial dimension of organized crime away from the metropolis, in particular to the province of Caserta and the area of Casal di Principe (Anselmo-Braucci, 2008)

While in Naples, with the election of the former communist Antonio Bassolini, a new Renaissance was celebrated, the Camorre got out of the public and media attention, although they kept on generating, especially far from Naples, further links with the national and international, political and economic processes of globalization (Gribaudi, 2009). That explains why the explosion of the Scampia feud, fought between the Di Lauro clan and the so-called secessionists from the end of 2004 to the beginning of 2005, paved the way for the publication of Gomorrah. Saviano's statement of claim of 3600 killings from 1979 to 2005 appeared as a shock, the sudden awakening from a too-much-lasted illusion (Saviano, 2006). The Camorre seems to account for 45-55 billions of annual revenues (Forgione in Di Gennaro-Pizzuti, 2009), the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) published a report in 2005, indicating 70 killings by Campanian organized crime in 2003 (56% of the total murders in Campania, 9,8% in Italy). But while the national media has the impression to get a scoop, the analysts had already spent years and energies to define a consistent theoretical framework to the study of the organized crime based in Campania. 1.1.2 The theoretical framework The study, and consequent contrast, of the Campanian organized crime has always had to face a number of general and particular problems: the general ones derive from the difficulty which the analysis of an illegal social behavior always implies (Ruggiero, 1996; Van Schendel-Abraham, 2005), the particular ones are related to the traditional political and media indifference to a phenomenon which was thought to be the vanishing product of a backwards society (Banfield, 1958; Hobsbawm, 1971; Commissione Parlamentare Antimafia, 1994). On the contrary, the evolution and the increasing complexity of the Camorra has highlighted the importance of the accumulation of studies, information and resources within the field of a more professional antimafia front (Lupo, 1996; Sciarrone, 1998). Today hundreds of publications exist, concerning the history, the flows, the fields of action, the biographies, the trans-national connections, etc (Caggiano, 1908; Rossi, 1983; Sales-Barbagallo, 1990; Koutouzis, 1997; Paliotti, 2002; Esposito, 2004; Iovene, 2008). Nevertheless, several interpretative and general aspects of the phenomenon Camorre are regarded as unanswered, in particular with respect to other criminal organizations (Pizzuti in Di Gennaro-Pizzuti, 2009: 14). For instance, it cannot be stated that a shared definition of Camorra exists, so that the action of contrast changes, according to the different actors involved in it, and spreading doubts about what it is not Camorra and what

it is (Sales, 1993; Sales-Ravveduto, 2006; Barbagallo, 2010). In the new preface of a new edition of his Mafie vecchie, mafie nuove, Sciarrone tries to systematize the traditional and contemporary study of the mafie, in the South of Italy. He identifies five ideal-types, five general models of interpretation of the phenomenon, which account for the different emphasis adopted by the analysts, according to two main aspects: the modalities of social construction and representation (a culturalist or an organizational modality); the empirical schema adopted (focused on the internal or external relations established inside or outside the clans) [Sciarrone, 2009: 9-13]. A radical simplification of Sciarrone's ideal-typification is presented in the following figure: Aspects > Ideal-types v
(mafia as..) Bureaucracy Community Enterprise System Network ..plus.. Bourgeoisie Transversal (mafia = politics) traditional topos (Gaetano Mosca: yellow gloves mafia)

Modality of social construction and/or representation

Organizational Culturalist Organizational Organizational Organizational/Culturalist

Empirical schema adopted

Internal Internal=External External External Internal/External

Mafia as mechanical bureaucracy or anti-state Mafia as cultural code, indistinguishable from the context Mafia as business partner of the official economy Mafia as military component of a totally criminal system Mafia as criminal social capital (Sciarrone's perspective)

In a footnote, Sciarrone states that it would be useful to introduce a third dimension, relative to the position of the observer, that is relative to how the observer places him/herself with respect to the observed item, but I can't go deepen here.. (Id, 2009: 10). If we place ourselves, with respect to the organized crime, in a point of observation of the observers of the Camorra, we are able to establish what Luhmann calls a second order observation: the observation of a phenomenon through the observation of a third element allows to develop a

different and interesting perspective about the phenomenon and the observers themselves (Luhmann, 1993). And it's useful in particular when it would be very complicated to observe a phenomenon directly. The third dimension of observation generates a radical shift in the socialscientific analysis, as it assumes communication, rather than social action, as unity of analysis (Stichweh, 2000). It assumes communication because what we observe is not an observer in him/her/itself, but the object of him/her/its observation, which is And communication, in particular the descriptions of the phenomenon at national level (but probably also at local level), have changed radically along with the national success of Gomorrah.

1.1.3 The turning point: Gomorrah The media bubble generated by the publication of Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah embodies a more general problem of communication, about the Campanian organized crime within the so-called information society (Marmo, 2006). A simple descriptive analysis of the titles, containing the words Camorra and Gomorra, of the Italian newspapers since 2006 shows how the title of Saviano's novel has been progressively used as synonym of Campanian organized crime. The success of Gomorrah, the novel as well as the film, seems to go beyond the merits of their authors and to embrace a virtual arena where political decisions, in order to be effective, need a media legitimation (Bell, 1976; Lamberti, 1985; Luhmann 2000). The point is that the complexity of the analysis offered by an expert, over a complex topic, must be reduced, simplified, in order to reach a massive audience, to capture the attention of a large public (Luhmann, 1986; Id., 1988). Such function is performed by what Luhmann called the technology of dissemination, which plays the same kind of role as that played by the medium of money in the differentiation of the economy (Luhmann, 2000: 2). But any transaction, from a more complex to a simpler form of communication, implies a loss of information: and this loss always assumes a political meaning (Lyon, 1988; May, 2002). So, the massive attention brought to the phenomenon of the Camorre, thanks to popular instruments of dissemination as a novel or a film, and the creative utilization, by the Italian newspapers, of the term Gomorra call into question the way the system of communication reproduces its intrinsic bias, while describing a politically defined geographical social reality (Marmo, 2006; Ravveduto, 2007). It's as if Saviano's mix of fictional elements, social research, and judiciary acts, autonomously gained an independent existence (also independent from

its author), which originate (and today legitimate) last years State action of contrast of the clans in Campania (Capacchione, 2008; Dal Lago, 2010; Barbagallo, 2010). What's beyond the reasons of such a huge success?

1.2 The question The level of analysis and description of such a heterogeneity is essential to activate any effective political and social action. The fight against the Camorre needs to conceptualize the object of its intervention, too. And, as many commentators argued, no effective solution of the problems of Campania can be carried on without the substantial and active support of the whole civil society, or at least its legitimating support to the State action (Siani, 1991; Iaccarino, 2005; Anselmo-Braucci, 2008; Roberti in Di Gennaro-Pizzuti, 2009). So, these analyses and descriptions participate in such a fight, as consequences of old (and premises for new) hypotheses about what the State engaged in this struggle is (or, in case, should be). Thus, the way the Italian State and the Italian civil society perceive the web of descriptions of this criminal phenomenon seems to be decisive to implement a powerful action against the Camorre (Lamberti, 1985). Such perception is, today even more than before, subjected to the descriptions which the experts1 offer about the criminal flows, their historical roots, their economic influence in a world-economy, and the political support they can enjoy (Gribaudi, 2009). And when we mention the level of these descriptions, we do not merely refer to the local, national, and/or international level the Camorre's traffics have reached, but also to the local, national, and/or international level of the communication about them. We also refer to the misunderstandings which the translation of the grammar of the Camorre can generate (Cavaliere in Di Gennaro-Pizzuti, 2009). Thanks to researches, books, articles, novels, judiciary acts and public declarations, the experts enter the realm of the info-communication system to share their empirical knowledge with both other experts and nonexperts. The problem of knowledge in Gorgias (Nothing is, if anything is it cannot be known, if anything can be known it cannot be communicated) implies that if something can be communicated, it can be known and that if something can be actually known, it essentially is. What can be, and actually is, communicated, about the organized crime rooted in Campania, tells us of 1 Those directly and professionally engaged in such a production of a description of the phenomenon, scholars,
journalists, novelists, judges, politicians and activists.

what we can know about it, and, eventually, what we believe the organized crime rooted in Naples actually is. The outcome of such a process of communication of knowledge shall be a commonly accepted, legitimated description of the organized crime based in Campania: the Camorra is the state within the state, the anti-state, which mortifies the history of a whole nation (Di Gennaro-Pizzuti, 2009: 23). But what if the empirically founded descriptions of organized crime and the socially built and represented ones (Sciarrone, 2009: 10) generated conclusions and political consequences which don't overlap? Would this gap represent a new or an old hypothesis of what the State engaged in this fight is?

After my empirical recognition has terminated, I have come to the definition of three main interpretative hypothesis about the Ideo-Logic of the antiCamorra, that is the logic that originates the set of beliefs and values which legitimates such a political action of contrast, dealing with: the political use of the Campanian criminal issue at a national level the bias about the population of the South of Italy as logical bases legitimating such a political use the process of expansion of the historical capitalistic system, and of incorporation of the South of Italy as origin of the resistances which have lead to the southern and criminal issues.

1.2.1 Hypothesis 1: the Metacamorra The problem of what the Camorre are seems to be the premise of what we can collectively believe we know about them and, so, the premise of what we can communicate, in order to enhance consistent social practices aimed at contrasting them. Regardless of the existence of a shared definition of Camorra, the State defines the borders of a criminal phenomenon, which is criminal as long as it violates the law by threatening the monopoly of the coercion of force (Schmitt, 1988; Arendt, 1998; Marmo-Musella, 2003). It's the same reason d'etre of a modern State (Luhmann, 1978). But laws are, by definition, general and abstract: they don't provide citizens with simple practical instructions to apply to a social environment. Besides, the contrast of a complex phenomenon like the Camorre seems to require awareness and participation by the civil society. Unfortunately, the borders between public institutions, civil society, criminal organizations and

their relative representatives are definitely blurred, so that not only the daily contrast but even a well-founded and consistent knowledge of the adequate distinctions between what and who is legal, illegal or criminal seems to be difficult to develop (Gribaudi, 1991; Armao, 2000). A problem arises when corruption, exchanging vote, environmental crimes, black-market traffics, bribes, covers-up, alliances identify a gray are where legal, illegal, and criminal worlds overlap, making seem useful, for social sciences, to identify a crucial analytical distinction between the illicitness of the Camorre, on one hand, and, on the other hand, the illicitness by social actors other than those who are part of a clan (Behan, 1996; Dal Lago-Quadrelli, 2003). The term Camorra, whose historical etymology still represents a serious object of discussion (Barbagallo, 2010: 4), traditionally referred to a number of illegal activities, in particular those practiced by the so-called popolo minuto in Naples (Sales, 1993; Sales-Ravveduto, 2006; Barbagallo, 1999). Afterward, Pasquale Turiello established the parallel between the camorre at the bottom, the political patronage on the top (Turiello in Caizzi, 1970), the socialist review La Propaganda reported the abuses of the administrative camorra (Marmo in Gribaudi, 2009: 45), Salvemini talked about the governmental one (Salvemini in Caizzi, 1970) . So, in particular thanks to the work of the Saredo commission (1900), the term started being translated to report a more general climate of illegality, especially with reference to political corruption and white collars crimes. But it has also been suggested to distinguish between a Camorra tied to social marginalization and a Camorra tied to administrative corruption (Commissione Parlamentare Antimafia, 1994: 21-22). Unfortunately, the unexpected outcome of this transfer seems to have been the blurring of the adequate distinctions and the necessary borders which prevented the report of the Camorre from appearing generic and ineffective (Dal Lago, 2010). Because of such a mechanism, it's not unusual to observe, in the political and media debate, sometimes for self-admission (Marasca in Di GennarioPizuti, 2009), the construction of what the historian Marcella Marmo has described to me as metacamorra, which represents an anti-historical and abstract description of the criminal phenomenon, with no empirical foundation and no clear target (all is Camorra = no one is particularly guilty). The hypothesis is that such an intermediate category can account for the systemic nature of the society we live in, which connects our material conditions of existence. The replacement of the antithetic description of State vs Camorra, by this third element, prevent the Italian political class from labeling the dysfunctions of the system as criminal, so that they can be perceived as external to the State and the civil society, legitimating the belief that the legal can exist without being, directly or indirectly, involved

in the criminal. One consequence of such a belief is the strengthening of the national political community. Another consequence of the dualistic description of such a fight (State vs Camorra), as the eternal struggle between good and evil, has been the legitimation of the Italian State political action, allowing precise representatives of it to mask their legal, political and moral responsibilities with respect to the persistence of the Camorre (Allum, 1978; Barrese, 1994; Tranfaglia, 1994). But, on the other hand, a metacamorra can also be functional to the strengthening of a State authority towards its opponents in general, in the name of the repression of criminality (all is Gomorrah, so it has to be destroyed like the biblical village). But what do the most profound bases of the success of such antinomical description seem to be? 1.2.2 Hypothesis 2: the Southern Issue as bias The Southern issue and the definition of the macro-dimensions (such as a political, economic, social or cultural dimension), that explain the insurgence and persistence of it within the national political debate2, seems to follow the definition of the criminal issue (Bevilacqua, 1993; Cassano, 2009). My empirical recognition has suggested me the specular nature of those two problems, and the persistence of anthropological/culturalist/geographic bias connecting them (Lupo, 1996; Carmosino, 2009). The image of a pervasive and unbeatable, glocal, de-ideologized, allergic to work and honest profit, evil and corrupted, organized crime seems to overlap the anthropological/culturalist/geographic stereotype about the southern man: the terrone (pejorative term for southern people) is mafioso by definition and nature. And he may be contagious (Sciarrone, 1998). But, most interesting at all, the construction of such anthro/cult/geog bias is not, as many meridionalisti (intellectuals who have written about the Southern issue) seem to suggest, a particular construction of limited power groups (the politicians and industrial entrepreneurs of the North of Italy, or the landowners and corrupted public managers of the South of Italy, or both), but rather a collective construction whose historical genesis can nevertheless be traced (Bevilacqua, 1972; Trigilia, 1992; Villari, 1995; Meldolesi, 1998, Petraccone, 2005), as the spread of those bias among the workers supporting the Italian Socialist Party, in late nineteenth century, seems to prove (Gramsci, 2008). The hypothesis is that the anthro/cult/geog bias, which have no empirical foundations but a strong connection to a national media-political common feeling, provide the logic foundation of the idealistic representation of the fight against organized crime as antinomy. The historiography, the meridional literature and the qualitative

interviews, I have been collecting, are supposed to argue these interpretative hypotheses. But what are the material basis of such a logical construction?

1.2.3 Hypothesis 3: the legitimation of the incorporation of Southern Italy in a world-economy The problem of borders in Modern age bears upon the attempt (initially by sciences) to reduce the continuous complexity of social reality to a calculable, predictable and, thus, controllable sequence of discrete states: as the definition of frontiers, categories and label seems to be the most distinguishing feature of a capitalistic Modern age (Braudel, 1969; Wallerstein, 1989; Lee, 2010), the problem of defining the organized crime rooted in Campania arises as decisive, as the specialized literature and the interviewed observers testify. But even if we came to a theoretical definition of the Camorre, what is the practical social action which such a definition is supposed to inspire? How to distinguish a mafioso in a big city like Naples? Where is exactly the border between legal and illegal, between illicit and criminal, between criminal and mafioso or camorrista? Is criminal that large majority of Campanian citizens who, by trying to survive in a criminal environment, finance economic activities and behave as they supported the organized crime? Are they guilty because they pay abusive parking, or throw rubbish without differentiating it, or purchase a pair of shoes in a shop owned by a clan? Do those insoluble questions embody the whole of political and economic malfunctions which the universalist rhetoric of the Italian State suffers because of the tension generated by its declining position within a historical capitalist information society? The hypothesis is that it is plausible to explain the insurgence of those contradictory social actions, within the theoretical framework of the worldsystems analysis, as the outcome of a process of incorporation of the south of Italy into a world-economy and of the resistances that it has been generating (Wallerstein-Hopkins, 1987). The special legislation applied to the south, therefore, might be regarded as an attempt by the Italian State to gain political legitimacy and social consensus, through large expenditures and policies of industrialization and public employment (for example the tax on exportation of 1887, or the special legislation of 1901), whose political and economic aim was to create a larger demand for the Northern Italian market (Bevilacqua, 1993; Petraccone, 2005). The interviews, the historical and social-scientific literature (in particular the world-systems analysis), and some institutional secondary data will help to clarify the problem of borders of organized crime within a complex contemporary society.

Review of the Specialized Literature The review of the existing specialized literature (see essential references) suggests that a research on the ideology of the antiCamorra (that is the set of beliefs and values which inspire and legitimate the political action of the Italian State against the organized crime rooted in Campania) is still missing and it might represent a useful tool of comprehension of the persistence of the criminal phenomenon, with respect to the Italian institutions' action of contrast. Goals of the research Once the problem of the logic behind the beliefs and values, which inspire the fight of the Italian State against the Camorre, has been defined, we are supposed to mention the present and future political consequences of the Campanian criminal phenomenon. The opinion which the experts gave during their interview represents, undoubtedly, a starting point. But it's the sum up of the whole present analysis to provide the most reasonable conclusions and future perspectives, as such reasonableness founds the legitimacy and the same raison d'tre of the present analysis itself. The main thesis of the work can, thus, in spite of the changes that the writing of the research will require, be preliminarily anticipated here: The Camorre exist and exert an increasing influence on the national territory, economy, and politics. But in a economically deregulated information society it's not easy to get a profound and consistent knowledge about it. Nor such a knowledge is adequately promoted. A superficial2 description of the organized crime is functional to the persistence and evolution of the clans' influence, as it guarantees to specific political, economic and cultural actors an instrumental utilization of the threat it represents, thanks to the commonplaces about the southern man it seems to confirm. At a macro level and in the long, the ideological construction of these anthropological /culturalist/geographic bias has been legitimating laboral policies which have strengthened the position of Italy within a worldeconomy. Such a superficiality is sustainable as long as it can be ideologically legitimated, that means as long as the society can develop claiming that the action of the Italian State and the action of the organized crime can be effectively, analytically, and politically split in two.

2 That is, the distance between common feeling and commonplace, a nationally widespread knowledge without empirical foundations and whose sustainability is proportional to its ideological legitimacy.

2. The empirical side state of the research

List of privileged observers3
Scholars Francesco Barbagallo AnnaMaria Zaccaria Gabriella Gribaudi Luciano Brancaccio Gerardo. Marotta Marcella Marmo Marcello Ravveduto Amato Lamberti Rocco Sciarrone (Dot 2.0 interview) Marcello Anselmo Peppe Ruggiero Luca Rossomando Giovanni Marino Chiara Marasca Marco De Marco Isaia Sales Walter Medolla Carmine De Falco Tonino Ferro Bruno De Stefano Daniela De Crescenzo Angelo Petrella (waiting for the answer) Loretta Napoleoni (Dot 2.0 interview) Marco Rovelli (Dot 2.0 interview) Franco Roberti Filippo Beatrice Raffaele Cantone Sergio Amato Federico Cafiero De Raho Donato Ceglie (in attesa di risposta) Lino Martone Tano Grasso Francesco Ceci Tommaso Sodano Giovanni Zoppoli Lorenzo Diana Nunzia Lombardi Peppe Messina Don Tonino Palmese Fabio Giuliani Paolo Siani Univ. of Napoli Univ. of Napoli Univ. of Napoli Univ. of Napoli Istituto Studi Filosofici Univ. of Napoli Univ. of Salerno Univ. of Napoli Univ. of Torino See refer. Legambiente Napoli monitor La Repubblica Corriere Mezzogiorno Direttore Corr Mezz See refer. Free lance journalist Il Denaro Il Denaro City Il Mattino Economic analyst Novelist Procuratore capo SA DNA ex DDA Napoli Procura Napoli Procura Napoli Procura S.ta Maria Capua Vetere Confagricoltura Antiracket Urbanista Cons provinciale RC Mammut Scampia Senatore PD Legambiente Ex cons comun CS Libera Campania Libera Campania Fondazione Polis

Journalists/ Novelists

Magistrates

Politicians/ Activists

3 The list is not definitive. Some observers have been chosen because widely recognized as experts, some have been suggested during the interviews, some have been met by chance.

Mentioned references
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