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Phillips, Amber 
ORCID: 0000-0003-3227-7672
(2017)
Corrado Alvaro and the Calabrian mafia: a critical case study of the use of literary and journalistic texts in research on Italian organized crime.
Trends in Organized Crime, 20 (1-2).
pp. 179-195.
doi:10.1007/s12117-016-9285-0
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Text (Peer-reviewed version)
Corrado Alvaro and the Calabrian Mafia.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License All Rights Reserved. Download (229kB) | Preview |
Abstract
The Calabrian mafia, or ’Ndrangheta, is a hugely powerful international crime syndicate, with origins that can be traced back to the late nineteenth century. By far the least studied of Italy’s ‘big three’ mafias, socio-historical research on the earlier stage of the organisation’s history has tended to make extensive use of literary and journalistic texts as source material (see Arlacchi (1983), Ciconte (1992), Paoli (2003)). This paper will present a cautionary example of the importance of interrogating literary and journalistic representations of Italian organized crime sensitively and within context, taking an article written by celebrated Calabrian writer Corrado Alvaro as a case study. It argues that academic perceptions of the early ’Ndrangheta are, through their reliance on cultural products, impacted by the narratives contained within such texts; a phenomenon which merits further investigation. Further, drawing on cultural memory studies, it argues that, while the accuracy of the representations of the ’Ndrangheta contained within these texts may be called into question, they do, through their ability to both reflect and shape public opinion, have a valuable contribution to make to our understanding of perceptions of Calabrian organized crime in its native region.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Article Type: | Article |
| Additional Information: | The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-016-9285-0 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Mafia; 'Ndrangheta; Calabria; Representations; Organized crime |
| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DG Italy H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology. > HV6001 Criminology P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN4699 Journalism |
| Divisions: | Schools and Research Institutes > School of Business, Computing and Social Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Amber Phillips |
| Date Deposited: | 28 Sep 2018 11:09 |
| Last Modified: | 31 Aug 2023 08:24 |
| URI: | https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/6016 |
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