The Social Network Analysis For The Study Of Mafia Associations. The Italian Case Of Mafia Capitale

The risk you take when you want to lead a study on the Mafia – a social phenomenon by its very nature characterized by secrecy – is to carry out superficial analyzes that opacify the object of investigation depriving it of its concreteness. For this reason, I think it is useful to address a methodological reflection on the study of mafia associations and to reason about which theoretical approaches, research methods and tools allow to better explore a phenomenon that, in multiple circumstances, represents a real social emergency. Following the social changes generated by globalization and the evolution of the cultural and economic models connected to it, organized crime has taken on a new form by developing more flexible and complex reticular organizational models. This renovation of criminal organizational phenomena requires the adoption of sophisticated theoretical and methodological tools that allow us a careful understanding to be reached: an empirical study on organized crime would not be exhaustive in any way if it limited to the use of traditional methodologies geared towards analysis of individual attributes, rather than towards relational dynamics that guide the association among persons. For these reasons, I propose a methodological reflection about the value of adopting the network approach and the utility of tools made available by the Social Network Analysis in the study of the Mafia. The idea is that the network perspective succeeds in capturing the specificities of a social phenomenon by its very nature characterized by the combination of multiple forms of association. Specifically, I will reflect on the advantages/disadvantages in the choose of analyzing relational data for the study of this topic and about difficulties that a researcher can meet during various steps of the research (selection of case studies, detection of sources, data collection and analysis). In support of the proposed arguments, I will illustrate an example of empirical research focused on the analysis of Mafia Capitale (a criminal group of Mafia inspiration, which has been active for a certain period in Rome). The choice of this empirical case depends on the particularity that distinguishes the Roman criminal organization, whose formation demonstrates how the transformations mentioned above have hit the Italian organized crime that, in certain circumstances, it has reconfigured itself by renouncing the archaic dimension that has always distinguished it and creating new associative forms.