Telling about the Mafia: Resarch, Reflexivity, Representation

This edited Symposium of the journal "Sociologica" (http://www.sociologica.mulino.it/main/index) is aimed at collecting and comparing the voices of some leading scholars of the Mafia coming from the social sciences – scholars whose research has contributed to the development of Mafia studies as a veritable specialty in the social sciences over the last forty years: the German sociologist Henner Hess, the American anthropologists Jane and Peter Schneider, the Canadian political scientist Filippo Sabetti, the Italian (but UK-based) sociologist Diego Gambetta, and the Sicilian social researcher and writer Umberto Santino. I invited these authors to write a personal account of their research experience as Mafia scholars, insisting on four topics: how and why did they chose the Mafia as an object of investigation; which contribution to their sociological gaze and imagination this research provided and what the Mafia as a sociological object may contribute to the sociological imagination in general; what impact has their work had on Mafia studies and scholarship at large. Last but not least, what impact according to them their previous life experiences and values had on them choosing how to study the Mafia.