Sociology of Organized Crime

The course aims to provide students with the cognitive and interpretative bases of the main phenomena of organized crime, with particular (but not exclusive) reference to the Italian experience.In its first part it aims to define the fundamental models of mafia organization and to clarify the common denominators, deepening the mechanisms of expansion of mafia outside the traditional boundaries, also in international projection, according to political, economic, social, cultural, demographic factors.
In its second parte the course aims to explain mafia criminal organizations as organizations oriented to a specific combination of power and profit and based on specific values and associative links, able to impose themselves even outside the original areas. The models and categories of economic and organizational science are thus used to their analysis: structure, strategy, resources, territory, motivations, culture, borders, environmental relations, leadership, innovation, networks.
The aim is to offer students both clear and grounded basic knowledge of the Mafia phenomenon and the theoretical tools necessary to grasp its dynamics within social transformations and to correlate them with the broader context of reference.

-Knowledge and understanding of the nature and social quality of the Mafia phenomenon, of its reasons of strength and its expansive potential. In particular, the teaching tends to encourage a comparative approach between the different concrete forms of the Mafia phenomenon.
- The ability to apply knowledge and understanding are developed above all in terms of recognition of the Mafia phenomenon in its criminal, economic, but also cultural and linguistic manifestations.
- Critical and judgment skills are promoted especiallyl in relation to the most common stereotypes about the identity and causes of the Mafia phenomenon, through specific classroom discussions and the comparison with selected testimonies, as well as through the offer of integrative didactic experiences (in particularly the so-called itinerant university, that is, visits to places significantly characterized by the mafia presence).
-The ability to communicate what has been learned is promoted both through the performance of voluntary written tests (reflections or stories of current events) and through the performance of the final tests exclusively in oral form; but also through the offer of integrative opportunities (journalism workshop, participation in writing theater texts, articles on sites, voluntary involvement in meetings in schools)