Ulrich Bröckling

Rackets and Racketeers

A Sociological Approach to “Men of Disorder”

Lecture for the international workshop “Men of Disorder – Masculinity, Violence and Urban
Networks in the Modern Middle East and Central Asia” Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg,
24.04.2014

When Mr Gölz invited me to do the opening lecture at this conference I impulsively said yes.
As a member of the Freiburg Collaborative Research Centre “Heroes, Heroisation, Heroisms”
I am naturally interested, from a sociological point of view, in “informal male networks and
their leading heroes”, as they are referred to in the call for papers. I am also currently working
with a number of colleagues on a book project that looks at social and cultural-theoretical
approaches to “The Other Sides of Order”. We consider theoretical concepts such as crisis,
state of exception and disturbance or transgression, among others. In light of this I felt that a
connection could definitely be made with “Men of Disorder”. However, a rude awakening
occurred as I began to seriously plan my talk. One look at the present programme quickly
showed me that I lack the necessary expertise to deal with the questions that will be discussed
here over the next two days. On the subject of “Modern Middle East and Central Asia” I
hardly know more than what can be read in the German papers and I haven’t taken note of the
more recent research on masculinities either (A colleague of mine is responsible for gender
studies at my institute…) In other words: Unfortunate conditions for a keynote lecture at this
workshop.
In order to avoid speaking about a topic that you know a lot about while I know less, I have
decided to leave aside the regional references entirely and only touch on the gender aspects.
Instead I will approach the men of disorder from the perspective of a sociology of power and
domination. I will ask how their networks, which oscillate between criminal gangs,
paramilitary organisations, religious groups and populist movements, are organised, how they
operate, what role charismatic leaders play in them and, in what ways they are interwoven
with the governmental and religious elite. – Can we even speak of networks here? And can
the leaders really be described as heroes? In order answer these questions this I return to the
term that was first made productive for the analysis of contemporary relationships of
domination by proponents of critical theory during the Second World War, namely the term
racket. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno use it in their notes for “Dialectic of

1
Enlightenment” as does Otto Kirchheimer in his essay “In Quest of Sovereignty” from 1944.1
Following this I will sketch how these works introduce racket as a key term for a sociology of
domination, albeit a sociology that has only been elaborated in fragments. The connection
between protection and subjugation will thus adopt a central position here. Lastly, I will
consider the relationship between order and disorder under this type of rule.

I.
So, what is a racket? According to the Oxford Dictionary the term describes “a loud
unpleasant noise, a din” on the one hand, and on the other “an illegal or dishonest scheme for
obtaining money” or “a person’s line of business or way of life”. John Kobler, mafia boss Al
Capone’s biographer, offers an explanation of the link between these disparate semantic
fields:
“The word ‘racket’ in the criminal sense, which actually means row, noise, spectacle, might
stem from an organisation that the old New York gangs mimicked: Social and political clubs
of that time traditionally organised charity events for their own benefit. They were noisy
festivities with brass bands and unavoidable rows connected to excessive drinking, so much
so that the events were eventually known as ‘rackets’. A gangster who wanted to make an
easy profit, which appeared legal to the outside world, set up a charity foundation where he
was the only member. He then advertised a ‘racket’ and forced business owners in the
neighbourhood to sell entire blocks of tickets by threatening them with the potential
demolition of their property, should they refuse.”2
Here there is a transfer of meaning from noisy festivals to the economic interests of different
groups aligned with those festivities, through to the gangster milieu and extortion, also known
as the protection racket. Within this transfer patterns can be recognised that led Horkheimer,
Adorno and Kirchheimer to see the racket as a cipher for the constitution of the society of
their time. The term refers to groups that are able and prepared to carry out violence, groups
that force themselves on business people or companies as “protectors”, get paid for this
“protection” and finance their livelihood from the extorted taxes. Generally the threat of
violence backed up by intermittent “punitive action” is enough to achieve the desired effects
without violence actually having to take place regularly.3

                                                                                                               
1
Theodor W. Adorno: Reflections on Class Theory, in: Can One Live After Auschwitz? A Philosophical
Reader, Stanford 2003, p. 93-110; Max Horkheimer: Zur Soziologie der Klassenverhältnisse, in: Gesammelte
Schriften, vol. 12, Frankfurt/M. 1985, p. 75-104; id.: Die Rackets und der Geist, ibid., p. 287-291; Otto
Kirchheimer: In Quest of Sovereignty, in: The Journal of Politics, vol. 6 (1944), no. 2 (May), p. 139-176.
2
John Kobler: Al Capone. Sein Leben, seine Untaten, seine Zeit, Bern/München 1981, p. 216, quoted in:
Wolfgang Pohrt: Brothers in Crime, Berlin 1997, p. 28.
3
See Michael Th. Greven: Zur Kontinuität der ‚Racket-Theorie’. Max Horkheimers politisches Denken nach
1945, in: id.: Kritische Theorie und historische Politik. Theoriegeschichtliche Beiträge zur gegenwärtigen
Gesellschaft, Opladen 1994, p. 157-181, here: p. 161.

2
Racket theory was supposed to give an answer to the question of what happened to the social
classes “under the conditions of monopoly and total domination”4, which was the critical
theorists’ short formulation of contemporary society at the beginning of the 1940s. For
Kirchheimer the term hinted first and foremost at the separation of individual performance
and societal success. It means that the idea of meritocracy was pure ideology. Kirchheimer
writes:
“If somebody asks another, ‘What is your racket?,’ he may intend merely to inquire about the
other's professional status, but the very form of the question refers to a societal configuration
which constitutes the proper basis for any individual answer. It expresses the idea that within
the organizational framework of our society attainment of a given position is out of proportion
to abilities and efforts which have gone into that endeavor. It infers that a person’s status in
society is conditional upon the presence or absence of a combination of luck, chance, and
good connections, a combination systematically exploited and fortified with all available
expedients inherent in the notion of private property. [...] The term racket is a polemical one.
It reflects on a society in which social position has increasingly come to depend on a relation
of participation, on the primordial effect of whether an individual succeeded or failed to
‘arrive’. Racket connotes a society in which individuals have lost the belief that compensation
for their individual efforts will result from the mere functioning of impersonal market
agencies.”5
Class rule, as it defined the liberal era of capitalism, has, following this thesis, transformed
into the rule of the racket. Whereas class rule secured a minimum rule of law, at least
formally, the rackets dispensed with the liberal achievements of legal equality and freedom of
contract. Outwardly, they formed associations for the efficient organisation of threats,
inwardly a hierarchical structure of clientalistic allegiances which demanded unconditional
obedience from each individual. In this way, stated Adorno, “the dialectic of class ends in a
naked clique system” and “by abolishing the classes in this way, class rule comes into its

                                                                                                               
4
Horkheimer: Zur Soziologie der Klassenverhältnisse, p. 101.
5
Kirchheimer: In Quest of Sovereignty, p. 160f. „Wenn jemand gefragt wird: ‚What’s your racket?’, so mag
das einzig eine Erkundigung nach dem Beruf des Betreffenden sein; aber die besondere Form der Frage
nimmt Bezug auf gesellschaftliche Verhältnisse, die erst den geeigneten Hintergrund für jede individuelle
Antwort darstellen. Die Frage drückt aus, daß in unserer Gesellschaft das Erreichen einer bestimmten Position
in keiner sinnvollen Beziehung zu den aufgewendeten Anstrengungen steht. Sie läßt darauf schließen, daß der
soziale Status einer Person vom Vorhandensein oder Fehlen einer Mischung aus Glück, Zufall und guten
Beziehungen abhängt, einer Mischung, die systematisch mit allen Kniffen ausgebeutet und verstärkt wird, die
in der Institution des Privateigentums angelegt sind. [...] Der Begriff ‚racket’ ist ein polemischer. Er sagt
Wesentliches über eine Gesellschaft aus, in der soziale Positionen zunehmend von der Kategorie des
‚Dazugehörens’ bestimmt sind und davon, ob ein Individuum in dieser Hinsicht ein Erfolg oder ein Versager
ist. ‚Rackets’ kennzeichnen eine Gesellschaft, in der die Individuen den Glauben daran verloren haben, daß
sie durch das bloße Funktionieren des unpersönlichen Marktmechanismus für ihre eigenen Anstrengungen
entschädigt werden“ (Zur Frage der Souveränität, in: Politik und Verfassung, Frankfurt/M. 1964, S. 79f.).

3
own”. 6 The class antagonism had mutated into generalised gang war. Gangland was
everywhere.

“The racket model”, writes Horkheimer in 1943, “which was typical of the behaviour of the
rulers towards the ruled, is now representative of all human relationships, even those within
the working class. The difference between the racket in capital and the racket in work lies in
the fact that with the capitalistic racket the whole class profits while the work racket functions
as a monopoly only for its leaders and for the labour aristocracy. The working masses are the
objects of both forms; either way they have to pay for it.”7
Horkheimer who deals with the racket most intensively, is not however content with the
racket as a diagnosis of the times but generalises it to a “basic form of domination”. Just as he
and Adorno see the “dialectic of enlightenment” laid out in archaic myth, the racket has
“imprinted all forms of society with its stamp” from the beginning of human civilisation up to
the present:

“It ruled as a racket of the clergy, the court, property owners, races, men, adults, the family,
the police, crime and within these mediums as individual rackets against the rest of its sphere.
It set up an opposition between inside and outside everywhere, the human being, as long as he
did not belong to any racket, was outside in the radical sense, the human being as such was
lost.”8
Accordingly, the origin of domination does not lie in the principle of the division of labour
and in property relations, as Marxist orthodoxy alleges, but rather in the ability to threaten and
use violence. “Racket theory is primarily a theory of violence on which rule bases itself
genetically and causally, and which, even in its more elaborate forms, always represents the
ultimate moment to which rule and coercion can be reduced."9 Within the “primordial horde”
physical superiority determined the ranking from leader to the next strongest male through to
the weakest member of the group. In the historical process however, “this hierarchy of power,
which was originally based purely on natural potency, is modified by the process of
development until it eventually corresponds to the second, societal nature, a nature of position
and not of strength.”10

It is not entirely unjustifiable that Horkheimer has been accused of levelling the specific
historical formation of domination with such generalisations. If everything is equally

                                                                                                               
6
Adorno: Reflections on Class Theory, p. 102, 100. „In solcher Abschaffung der Klassen kommt die
Klassenherrschaft zu sich selber“; „Indem aus der Dialektik der Klasse am Ende die nackte Cliquenherrschaft
sich erhebt...“ (Reflexionen zur Klassentheorie, in: Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 8, Frankfurt/M. 1972, S. 383,
381).
7
Horkheimer: Zur Soziologie der Klassenverhältnisse, p. 101f.
8
Horkheimer: Die Rackets und der Geist, p. 291.
9
Greven: Zur Kontinuität der „Racket-Theorie“, p. 161.
10
Horkheimer: Die Rackets und der Geist, p. 287.

4
understood as a racket, “be it stone-age tribal society or feudal nobility clan, class or
bourgeois fascist party, be it the individual family or the capitalist monopoly”, the term might
degenerate into a passepartout.11 Indeed, the “true sociology of the racket as a vital element of
the ruling class throughout history”, which Horkheimer demands, and which he implies could
help clarify the aim of a racket-less, democratic society, 12 is a form of sociological
enlightenment that he himself only attempts to theorise. And yet, his five-page comprehensive
socio-anthropological sketch of the rackets describes the dynamic of institutionalised power
relations more precisely than many other sociological papers.

What then does this racket-model that Horkheimer identified consist of? What characterises
this form of exercising power? For Horkheimer, protection is the elementary function of the
rackets; closely connected to this is the second function, extortion, “the snatching of the
largest possible share of circulating surplus value”.13 The famous essay “War Making and
State Making as Organized Crime” by the historian Charles Tilly can be read as contributing
to the historical foundation of Horkheimer’s thesis without actually making explicit reference
to it. In this text Tilly drew attention to the fact that “in contemporary American parlance, the
word ‘protection’ sounds in two contrasting tones”:

“With one tone, ‘protection’ calls up images of the shelter against danger provided by a
powerful friend, a large insurance policy, or a sturdy roof. With the other, it evokes the racket
in which a local strong man forces merchants to pay tribute in order to avoid damage –
damage the strong man himself threatens to deliver. The difference, to be sure, is a matter of
degree. [...] Someone who produces both the danger and, at a price, the shield against it is a
racketeer. Someone who provides a needed shield but has little control over the danger’s
appearance qualifies as a legitimate protector, especially if his price is no higher than his
competitors’.” 14
The combination of the promise of safety on the one hand and extortion, meaning the
absorption of surplus product by intimidation, on the other, forms the elementary mechanism
of the racket-model. Why is this coupling so fundamental? Why do the rackets not refrain
from the cynical rhetoric of protection, why do they not simply show their weapons and let
them do the talking? The masquerade of security guards or other services, the euphemisms for
offers that one cannot refuse, like those offered by the Godfather in Mario Puzi’s mafia
trilogy, first and foremost increase the imbalance of power: In this way the racketeers
demonstrate their superiority and humiliate the victims by not only squeezing them dry but by
                                                                                                               
11
Gerhard Scheit: Suicide Attack. Zur Kritik der politischen Gewalt, Freiburg 2004, p. 341.
12
Horkheimer: Zur Soziologie der Klassenverhältnisse, p. 103.
13
Horkheimer: Soziologie der Klassenverhältnisse, p. 102.
14
Charles Tilly: War Making and State Making as Organized Crime, in: Peter Evans/Dietrich
Rueschemeyer/Theda Skocpol (Eds.): Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge 1985, p. 170f.

5
presenting this as the victims’ own vested interests. Anyone who is able to redefine reality at
will in this way is certainly in a position to feel like the Godfather.

Secondly, the linking of protection and subjugation also calls to mind the basic foundation of
legitimising any type of domination: To be in it for the long run, domination is dependent on
some form of recognition from those who are subjugated, even if the recognition is based on a
realistic assessment of power relations or the sense that a revolt would be futile. Sheer
violence, and above all the threat of it, is not enough to claim people’s continued obedience
over long periods of time. Thus the rulers combine intimidation, which in extreme cases
means threatening to destroy their subordinates, with the assurance that they will be able to
buy security through obedience. Where a state monopoly of violence does not exist or is
fragile, it may seem opportune for weaker individuals to place themselves under the
“protection” of the racketeers and in this way prevent extortion from others. And unlike
honourable businessmen who generally have nothing to give, the racketeers sometimes even
show their loyal protégés generosity:

“These gangsters are the finest fellows you want to meet“, William Foote Whyte quotes a
young man in his famous study on the gang world of the “Street Corner Society” of the
1940s: “They’ll do a lot for you, Bill. You go up to them and say, ‘I haven’t eaten for four
days, and I haven’t got a place to sleep,’ and they’ll give you something. Now you go up to a
businessman, one of the respected members of the community, and ask him. He throws you
right out of the office.”15
The dominated make their decisions based on the fatal dialectic of the lesser evil: The ones
who claim to “protect” them from attack simultaneously embody the - largely predictable –
threat. To eke out a living alone and defenceless appears worse than being confronted with a
calculable evil. However, those who do not have a patron or who do not pay the
organisation’s toll, run a greater risk than before. Therefore the weak attach themselves to the
strong. Relations of subjugation can only be stable when they appear to both sides as a
“rational choice”, regardless of how twisted this might seem. The rackets constitute a
parasitical economy: One party collects while the other one pays and hopes for protection
rent; by giving up a part of their income they hope to pursue their businesses unharmed.
The difference between mafia organisations and legal authority, between a protection racket
and collection of taxes is, for Horkheimer, almost imperceptible. Creating a sense of danger,
which can then be implemented to claim tribute payments and promises of loyalty in
exchange for its prevention, is a strategy used in equal measure by gangs, warlords and state

                                                                                                               
15
William Foote Whyte: Street Corner Society. The Social Structure of an Italian Slum, Chicago 1966, 6th Ed.,
p. 142.

6
authorities. From the perspective of the individual, therefore, it makes little difference which
racket he submits to. Horkheimer however also attributes a critical force to the institution of
law. Although its origins are likewise in the perpetuation of power relations: “When an
organisation is so powerful”, he writes, “that its will can maintain, as an on going rule, the
behaviour of all the inhabitants in one geographical area, the rule of individuals adopts the
form of law.” In fact in this fixed form “law achieves, like other compositions, its own nature
and power of resistance.” In contrast to the form of rule constituted by rackets, which is based
on the sovereignty of the strong setting rules for the weak without having to follow them
themselves, the law is applied “for and against everybody from a set day until public
revocation”.16 Thus it becomes a counter-principle to the rackets and vice versa - the racket-
principle becomes a perverted form of law. The law also protects and threatens; the order it
produces is based on the monopolised ability and readiness of the state to use violence.
However, the protection that the law promises is more than just a cipher for the temporary
suspension of violence against the submissive. Under the rule of law, at least according to the
letter of law, even the weakest have rights and can hold the strongest to account.
Racket theory paints a picture of domination in which the individual can only survive through
affiliation with those who are stronger than them and where the stronger base their power on
binding the weaker through promises of loyalty and threats of violence. This is the third
explanation for the connection between both oppositional mechanisms of power: In
authoritarian forms of statehood – as a quick reminder: the texts by Horkheimer, Adorno and
Kirchheimer stem from the period of the Second World War – in authoritarian forms of
statehood domination appears as a personal relationship of dependency supported by violence
and not as an abstract societal synthesis like the one the political economy of capitalism
engenders. On one side there are competing power factions that feud amongst themselves and
are held together weakly by ideology and the hope of profit, on the other there are isolated
individuals who seek protection from the powerful whose threats they face, protection they
can only find once they have sworn their allegiance. And even then their position remains
precarious.
The publicist Gerhard Scheit has pointed out that Horkheimer projects the experience of his
present into history. For all epochs, even the prehistoric, he assumed this individualised
subject that first emerged in modernity.
“Herein lies the unhistorical aspect of this description whose truth can nonetheless be
recognised in the fear that modernity, without crossover and contradiction, would result in old

                                                                                                               
16
Horkheimer: Die Rackets und der Geist, p. 289f.

7
barbaric forms and every development of individuality that had in fact been possible through
exchange and contract would suddenly be taken away.” 17
The idea of a sudden reversal of civilisation into barbarism lies within racket theory.
Horkheimer formulates a negative historical philosophy: The archaic appears at the same time
as a temporary end point of a societal development which denies the notion of progress. When
all social relationships under the conditions of developed capitalism and an authoritarian state
can be traced back to the same mechanisms of protection and threat, then history is ill-fated.

II.
On first glance it is not clear which strands lead from critical social theory as a theory of
domination to the men of disorder. Structures of domination are characterised by at least
temporarily fixing and institutionally anchoring power relations. Domination requires a
minimum set of rules, which is to say a minimum level of order. To dominate means to
organise people and things regardless of how fragile the resulting order might be. If the racket
represents a general model of domination, then the racketeers are thus firstly men of order and
not men of disorder.
However, social order is not singular but rather disparate orders coexist and overlap, compete
and fight with each other. Family gangs exist alongside business connections, the structure of
a company alongside that of an ethnic community, a criminal syndicate alongside the state
legal system, secret societies alongside public administration, old boy networks alongside
election clubs. The reach and density of the different forms of order vary as much as the
foundations of their legitimacy and their tasks. Discourses on order are agonal and therefore
depend on points of view: From the perspective of one form of order the competitors appear
as deficient, illegitimate or are immediately perceived as pure anomie. In an attempt to
weaken the opposing form of order, it is denounced as non-order. As defence against chaos
every means is justifiable.
The strict opposition between order and its other is further blurred by the fact that every order
has fissures. That which it transforms into order also undermines it. Each political order
contains within it moments of uncertainty, of irregularity and anomie and each political order
must contain them, if it does not want to stagnate through conformity or suffocate from
repression. In addition, political orders are dependent on a constitutive outside for their
facilitation and legitimation – the horror of civil war gave birth to Leviathan, the fear of
global terrorism justifies the security state. Conversely, there is no disorder sans phrase.

                                                                                                               
17
Scheit: Suicide Attack, p. 345.

8
Rules and regularities, expectations and the expectations of expectations, norms and
sanctioning mechanisms establish themselves even under the conditions of a Hobbesian state
of nature. Even violence, when it is more than an one-time eruption, follows instrumental,
ideological and/or affective laws.
Accordingly, order and disorder always coalesce in hybrids. This goes in particular for social
associations that depend on threats and the intermittent use of violence. Those who operate
within illegal markets like drug-dealers or human traffickers cannot fall back on the state
instances of law enforcement and must force adherence to contracts using other means than
the police or the courts. Nevertheless, the threat and use of violence generally ensue in a
calculated and organised way, in other words: they ensue in an ordered way. Racketeers do
not go berserk. Open violence is normally bad for business, as Whyte describes in his study
on Street Corner Society using an example of the robbery of an illegal betting shop:
You know what happened a few months ago in Tony Cataldo’s horse rooms? These three
fellows came up and knocked the door. (...) When they got in, they worked the holdup. They
wore masks, and they had three guns. They took over $ 1.500. (...) A thing like this is really a
shame. Of course, the business is against the law, but still it’s honest, and we aren’t bothering
nobody. Tony always pays what he’s supposed to pay. He takes care of customers. He don’t
want to harm nobody. But what can you do in a case like that? You can’t call the cops. We
kept this quiet. Even today nobody knows about it. It would kill the business if a thing like
this got around. (...) That’s why Tony didn’t shoot when the men were making their getaway.
(...) He could of shot at them easy, but if he had done that, the whole of Cornerville would
have been closed up. Shooting don’t pay in a case like that.” 18
Yet in other situations excessive violence could be worthwhile. Even then in the majority of
cases it is determined by economic calculation: An armed attack on a rival gang expands the
business territory, a brutal act of revenge demonstrates the ability and willingness to act and
thus secures reputations, the terrorising of customers who pay late increases the payment
moral of the rest, the murder of stubborn investigators or critical journalists puts their
business-damaging practices to an end, and eliminating traitors in their own ranks strengthens
discipline and brings the remaining members of the organisation even closer together.
Racketeers operate in markets and violence is an economic resource that is particularly
profitable when spaces exist where the state monopoly on violence is absent or barely
developed. In these situations emerges what anthropologist Georg Elwert refers to as
“markets of violence”, self-stabilising systems “in which robbery and the exchange of goods
as well as their transitional and combined forms (such as ransom, road tolls, protection money
and so on) occur. These different forms of action are connected in such a way that, in

                                                                                                               
18
Whyte: Street Corner Society, p. 131f.

9
principle, each agent has multiple options from robbery through to trade, in other words there
are never only absolute traders working against absolute robbers.”19 Under such conditions
the use of violence can also be beneficial in another way: The creation of fear is, in
comparison, an affordable way to generate loyalty, recruit a work force and fighters, and
arrange the transfer of funds. Even ostensibly meaningless terror finds its meaning in this
way.20 To be feared is also a source of economic power. However, neither stable relationships
of domination nor profitable relationships of exploitation can be built solely on fear, hence the
interplay between the threat of violence and the promise of protection.
Considered politically, racketeers are the virtuosos of manoeuvring between order and
disorder. They use (and often first and foremost create) zones of disorder to make themselves
into keepers of order. They destabilise political regimes that could pose a threat for them and
using force, support those who would give them free rein to carry on with their businesses.
Racketeers have a parasitical relationship towards authoritarian forms of statehood, but they
also thrive under the conditions of failing and fading states. In some cases the interlacing of
the racket and political leadership is so close that state power passes over into the hands of the
racketeers entirely. War making, state making and business making can hardly be
distinguished anymore. In other cases the relationship between state authorities and rackets
are rather configured as a delicate balance of forces that suspiciously observe and vie with
each other.
Finally, the organisation of the racket itself fluctuates between order and disorder.
Charismatic leader-follower relationships are to be found as are fraternities, traditional
patronage relationships as well as highly modern company structures, military authority as
well as contractual commitments. Since even the internal regime is based on a combination of
threat and promise, conspiracy, rivalries and nepotism are on the agenda. Even within the
internal world of the rackets it is possible to apply Foucault’s dictum that where there is
power, there is also resistance.
The racketeer is without a doubt a male role model and often a heroic one. For both popular
culture supplies a rich pool of examples. Racketeers are heroically worshipped as romantic
Robin Hoods, who take from the rich and give it to the poor, and they are also demonised as
ruthless criminals terrorising honest people. This ambivalence once more points to the
concomitance of protection and extortion. Although the gender aspect hasn’t been dealt with

                                                                                                               
19
Georg Elwert: Gewaltmärkte. Beobachtungen zur Zweckrationalität von Gewalt, in: Trutz von Trotha (ed.):
Soziologie der Gewalt, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, special edition 37/1997, p.
88.
20
See ibid., p.91.

10
in my lecture, the images of masculinity that are prevalent in the “urban networks in the
Modern Middle East and Central Asia”, will be discussed over the next two days. Perhaps
during your discussions you will be confronted with the basic mechanism that stood at the
centre of my attempt to outline a domination sociology of rackets, namely the link between
the promise of protection and the threat of violence. To investigate how this is entangled with
hegemonic masculinity and the order of gender certainly requires further attention. I wish you
thought-provoking lively discussions – and for my part as a cultural sociologist, I will go
home and watch the “Sopranos” or the next series of “Boardwalk Empire” on telly.

11