Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Mafia
Mafia
For other uses, see Mafia (disambiguation). Mafia is a term used to describe certain clan- or culturally-based organized crime enterprises. The original and best known Mafia is the Sicilian Mafia in Italy. When used alone, typically refers to either the Sicilian Mafia or the American Mafia. The term is sometimes used for other organized crime groups in Italy and around the world, e.g. "the Russian Mafia" or "the Japanese Mafia". These terms are applied informally by the press and public; the criminal organizations themselves have their own terms (e.g. the Sicilian Mafia calls itself "Cosa Nostra" and the "Japanese Mafia" calls itself yakuza). Virtually all groups that can be considered mafias are criminal organizations that use violence to practice extortion and protection racketeering. They often engage in other illicit activities such as drugtrafficking, loan-sharking, and fraud. Mafias are often bonded together by a code of honour, in particular the code of silence (or omert in southern Italy), to safeguard the organisation from outside intrusion and law enforcement action.[1]
Contents
[hide]
1 Etymology 2 Definitions
o o
2.1 Mafias as private protection firms 2.2 Mafia-type organizations under Italian law
o o
4 References
4.1 Sources
Etymology[edit]
There are several theories about the origin of the term "Mafia" (sometimes spelled "Maffia" in early texts). The Sicilian adjective mafiusu (in Italian: mafioso) may derive from the slang Arabic mahyas (), meaning "aggressive boasting, bragging", or marfud ( )meaning "rejected". In reference to a man, mafiusu in 19th century Sicily was ambiguous, signifying a bully, arrogant but also fearless, enterprising, and proud, according to scholar Diego Gambetta.[2] In reference to a woman, however, the feminine-form adjective "mafiusa" means beautiful and attractive.
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 Gaetano Mosca. The words Mafia and mafiusi are never mentioned in the play; they were probably put in the title to add a local flair. The play is about a Palermoprison gang with traits similar to the Mafia: a boss, an initiation ritual, and talk of "umirt" (omert or code of silence) and "pizzu" (a codeword for extortion money).[4] 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, Filippo Antonio Gualterio.[5]
Definitions[edit]
A formal definition of "mafia" can be hard to come by. The term 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 Sicilian Mafia that other criminal groups earn the label. The generalizing of the term has not been welcomed by all scholars. 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: While there was a time when people were reluctant to pronounce the word "Mafia" ... nowadays people have gone so far in the opposite direction that it has become an overused term ... I am no longer willing to accept the habit of speaking of the Mafia in descriptive and all-inclusive terms that make it possible to stack up phenomena that are indeed related to the field of organized crime but that have little or nothing in common with the Mafia.[6] Giovanni Falcone, 1990
system had all but collapsed. These gangs are popularly called "the Russian Mafia" by foreigners, but they prefer to go by the term "krysha". With the [Russian] state in collapse and the security forces overwhelmed and unable to police contract law, cooperating with the criminal culture was the only option [...] most businessmen had to find themselves a reliable krysha under the leadership of an effective vor. excerpt from McMafia by Misha Glenny.[8]
Italy[edit]
Other Italian criminal organizations include:
Camorra, operating in the region of Campania 'Ndrangheta in Calabria Sacra Corona Unita in Apulia Stidda in Sicily
Other countries[edit]
Albanian mafia Black Mafia Family in the USA Bosnian mafia Bulgarian mafia Chaldean mafia
Chechen mafia Corsican mafia Dixie Mafia in the southern USA Indian mafia in India Irish Mob in the USA Jewish-American organized crime Kkangpae, also known as Gundal/Jopok, in South Korea Macedonian mafia Mexican Mafia in the USA, also called "La Eme" Mungiki in Kenya Romanian mafia Russian mafia (Organizatsiya) in Russia Serbian mafia Triads in China [12] Yakuza in Japan