Description:
This book draws on three decades of ethnographic research to explore the penetration of mafia values in Sicilian society. By exploring rituals through which local society learns deep respect for those values, this study aims to offer a critical perspective on Sicilian modernity.
Brief description:
Berardino Palumbo is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Messina. In addition to co-editing two series of anthropological monographs, he is the author of several books and articles on the anthropology of Italy, and Sicily in particular.
Review Quotes:
"This is a book by a scholar enormously well-read in anthropological thought, capable of achieving a critical distance from normative readings that other disciplines have afforded the mafia by adopting an ethnographic approach to the utmost. Thanks to this Palumbian anthropology, we come to a profound understanding of the specific influences of the mafia on religion." - Giovanni Pizza, ANUAC 9 (2) (2020): 183-185.