1237004

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ISS0010.1177/02685809241237004International SociologyReviews: Political Sociology

Reviews: Political Sociology

International Sociology Reviews
2024, Vol. 39(2) 184­–198
Reviews: Political sociology © The Author(s) 2024
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DOI: 10.1177/02685809241237004
https://doi.org/10.1177/02685809241237004
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Marco Santoro
Mafia Politics, Polity Press: Cambridge, 2022; 307 pp.: ISBN 9780745670683, $28.95 (paperback)

Reviewed by: Tomasz Zarycki, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

Keywords
Bunt, communist parties, mafia studies, modernization theory, neo-tribal forms

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 endur-
ing 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 asym-
metrical 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 skep-
tical 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 compo-
nent of mafia activity, but he does not believe that it is its essential role. In opposition to
Reviews: Political Sociology 185

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 elemen-
tary form of politics’ and draws a picture in which the mafia and state interact in numer-
ous 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 judg-
mental 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 influ-
ence. 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 sug-
gests, 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 perspec-
tive. 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 par-
ticularly 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
186 International Sociology Reviews 39(2)

the mafia unilaterally demonize it or unjustifiably reduce it to either a criminal organiza-

tion 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, eco-
nomic 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 pre-
sent, though perhaps better concealed. In Western societies, in contrast to ‘Southern’
(including the Mediterranean) and ‘Eastern’ societies, they seem to be, in particular, bet-
ter 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 soci-
eties. 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 poten-
tial of the approach he outlines. Meanwhile, the ties that connected criminal organiza-
tions 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 organi-
zations 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
Reviews: Political Sociology 187

and have, especially at the level of their elites, precisely the aspects of a bond of brother-
hood, 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 com-
munist 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 sepa-
rated from the regular state structures by a rather clear boundary. The state administra-
tion 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 prin-
ciples 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 techni-
cal 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, protec-
tion 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 rea-
sons, however, he could choose to provide such help as he could, through informal chan-
nels 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
188 International Sociology Reviews 39(2)

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 pre-
sent. 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.

References
Magyar B (2016) Post-Communist Mafia State: The Case of Hungary. Budapest: Central European
University Press.
Slezkine Y (2017) The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Zarycki T (2002) Region Jako Kontekst Zachowań Politycznych. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo
Naukowe ‘Scholar’.

Author biography
Tomasz Zarycki PhD is sociologist and social geographer, professor at the University of Warsaw and
deputy director of the Robert Zajonc Institute for Social Studies (ISS UW). His publications include
‘Ideologies of Eastness in Central and Eastern Europe’ (Routledge, 2014), and ‘The Polish Elite and
Language Sciences A Perspective of Global Historical Sociology’ (Palgrave, 2022). The review was
written as part of research project funded by the National Science Center of Poland (NCN, grant no.
2020/39/B/HS6/00211).

Lorenza B Fontana
Recognition Politics: Indigenous Rights and Ethnic Conflict in the Andes, Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge, 2023; 242 pp.: ISBN 9781009265539, £75.00 (hbk)

Reviewed by: Ronaldo Munck, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland

Keywords
Andean politics, ethnic politics, recognition politics