Violent Contexts and Camorra Clans

The purpose of this contribution is to analyse Camorra clans as an emergent phenomenon within social and economic spaces, strictly related to the violent regulation of legal and illegal markets. The Neapolitan Camorra is commonly represented as a tissue of criminal groups stemming from the underclass – the so-called “plebe”, the wide mass of unemployed that historically characterises the city of Naples – with clear borders and identity, reinforced by rituals, hierarchies, leaderships, military functions and portions of territory under their control. This commonplace is reinforced by those scholars who adopt the theoretical perspective of criminology and functionalist sociology, that considers Camorra clans as close-knit and corporate groups, based on a specific subculture with distinguishing lifestyles, values and modes of behaviour. In spite of these widespread points of view, Camorra clans act as a wide family business: large kinship networks, intertwined with economic activities, often connected, through marriage strategies, to other families who play a strategic role in the same sector where the clan operates. Clans are mostly based on open entrepreneurial-type networks which operates on an international scale and in several economic sectors. The basic elements are three: a) family, the environment where forming and group reproduction occurs; b) violence, a systematic tool to dominate wide areas both in society and in the market place; c) entrepreneurship, a factor for the multiplication of resources and power. Because of these characteristics, the Camorra clans are very sensitive to the features of the territorial contexts they operate in and thus they take on different configurations depending on the time and space.