The systematic study of organized crime dates back to John Landesco’s classic of ethnography, Organized Crime in Chicago (1929). Since then, the field has grown considerably and, as well as criminologists and sociologists, the topic has been embraced by researchers from a broad range of disciplines, including political science, anthropology, economics, as well as literary and film studies.
While at first attention was principally devoted to the study of ‘traditional’ organized-crime groups, such as the Sicilian and the American mafias, since the 1980s, serious scholarly work has also emerged on, for example, the Russian mafia, the Japanese Yakuza, and the Triads in both Hong Kong, China, and the USA. Furthermore, researchers have recognized that the behaviour and structure of ‘traditional’ organized-crime groups, and their role in both legal and illegal markets, can be fruitfully compared and contrasted to new forms of organized crime in places as varied as Africa, Columbia, Northern Ireland, and Asia. The study of organized crime has also attracted researchers interested in popular representations of the phenomenon, mainly in films and novels. Furthermore, after the events of 11 September 2001, the intersection between organized crime and terrorism, and the ability of organized-crime groups to operate transnationally and expand to new territories, has gained a new significance.
As research on organized crime continues to flourish, this new title in the Routledge’s Critical Concepts in Criminology series, addresses the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of interdisciplinary scholarly literature. Organized Crime is a four-volume collection of the foundational and the very best cutting-edge scholarship. It is also fully indexed and includes a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. An indispensable reference collection, it is destined to be valued by scholars and students of the subject as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.
PROVISIONAL CONTENTS
Volume I: Definitions and Theories
1. Miguel de Cervantes, ‘Rinconete and Cortadillo’, Exemplary Stories (Oxford World Classics, 1998), pp. 71–102.
2. Michael D. Maltz, ‘On Defining "Organized Crime": The Development of a Definition and a Typology’, Crime and Delinquency, 1976, 22, 338–46.
3. Frank E. Hagan, ‘The Organized Crime Continuum: A Further Specification of a New Conceptual Model’, Criminal Justice Review, 1983, 8, 52–7.
4. Federico Varese, The Russian Mafia (Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 3–6.
5. Letizia Paoli, ‘The Paradoxes of Organized Crime’, Crime, Law and Social Change, 2002, 37, 1, 51–97.
6. Daniel Bell, ‘Crime as an American Way of Life’, Antioch Review, 1953, 13, 131–54.
7. Peter A. Lupsha, ‘Individual Choice Material Culture and Organized Crime’, Criminology, 1981, 19, 3–24.
8. Dwight C. Smith, ‘Paragons, Pariahs, and Pirates: A Spectrum-Based Theory of Enterprise’, Crime & Delinquency, 1980, 26, 3, 358–86.
9. Mark H. Haller, ‘Illegal Enterprise: A Theoretical and Historical Interpretation’, Criminology, 1990, 28, 207–35.
10. Richard Hobbs, ‘The Firm: Organised Crime on A Shifting Terrain’, British Journal of Criminology, 2001, 41, 549–60.
11. Thomas C. Schelling, ‘Economics and Criminal Enterprise’, The Public Interest, 1967, 7, 61–78.
12. Thomas C. Schelling, ‘What is the Business of Organized Crime?’, Journal of Public Law, 1971, 20, 71–84.
13. J. M. Buchanan, ‘A Defense of Organized Crime?’, in S. Rottenberg (ed.), The Economics of Crime and Punishment (American Enterprise Institute, 1973), pp. 119–32.
14. P. H. Rubin, ‘The Economic Theory of the Criminal Firm’, in S. Rottenberg (ed.), The Economics of Crime and Punishment (American Enterprise Institute, 1973), pp. 155–66.
15. Frederic C. Lane, ‘Economic Consequences of Organized Violence’, Journal of Economic History, 1958, 18, 401–17.
16. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Blackwell, 1974), pp. 3–25.
17. C. Tilly, ‘War Making and State Making as Organized Crime’, in P. B. Evans, D. Rueschemeer, and T. Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 169–90.
18. Diego Gambetta, ‘Fragments of an Economic Theory of the Mafia’, Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 1988, 29, 127–45.
19. Stergios Skaperdas, ‘The Political Economy of Organized Crime: Providing Protection When the State Does Not’, Economics of Governance, 2001, 2, 3, 173–202.
20. Donald R. Cressey, ‘Methodological Problems in the Study of Organized Crime as a Social Problem’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1967, 374, 101–12.
21. M. K. Sparrow, ‘The Application of Network Analysis to Criminal Intelligence: An Assessment of the Prospects’, Social Networks, 1991, 13, 251–74.
Volume II: Origins, Resources, Organization
22. Oriana Bandiera, ‘Private States and the Enforcement of Property Rights: Theory and Evidence on the Origins of the Sicilian Mafia’, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 2003, 19, 1, 218–44.
23. Federico Varese, ‘Is Sicily the Future of Russia? Private Protection and the Rise of the Russian Mafia’, Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 1994, 35, 224–58.
24. David H. Stark, The Yakuza Japanese Crime Incorporated (Ph.D. thesis, University of Michigan, 1981), pp. 26–44.
25. Curtis J. Milhaupt and Mark D. West, ‘The Dark Side of Private Ordering: An Institutional and Empirical Analysis of Organized Crime’, University of Chicago Law Review, 2000, 67, 1, 41–98.
26. Robert A. Rockaway, ‘The Notorious Purple Gang: Detroit’s All Jewish Prohibition Era Mob’, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 2001, 20, 1, 113–30.
27. Mark H. Haller, ‘Organized Crime in Urban Society: Chicago in the 20th Century’, Journal of Social History, 1971, 5, 210–34.
28. Yiu K. Chu, The Triads as Business (Routledge, 2000), pp. 11–21, 31–5.
29. Giovanni Falcone, Men of Honour (Fourth Estate, 1992), ch. 1.
30. Federico Varese, The Russian Mafia (Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 184–6.
31. Jorge L. Borges, ‘The Man on the Pink Corner’, Collected Fictions (The Penguin Press, 1999).
32. Nicholas Pileggi, Wise Guy: Life in a Mafia Family (Corgi Books, 1996), pp. 59–62, 96–7.
33. Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia (Harvard University Press, 1993), ch. 6.
34. V. Pizzini, ‘Gender Norms in the Sicilian Mafia, 1945–86’, in M. L. Arnot and C. Usborne (eds.), Gender and Crime in Modern Europe (UCL Press, 1999), pp. 257–76.
35. Annelise Graebner Anderson, The Business of Organised Crime: A Cosa Nostra Family (Hoover Press, 1979), pp. 34–49.
36. Carlo Morselli, ‘Career Opportunities and Network-Based Privileges in the Cosa Nostra’, Crime, Law and Social Change, 2003, 39, 393–418.
37. Yiu K. Chu, The Triads as Business (Routledge, 2000), pp. 22–31.
38. Federico Varese, The Russian Mafia (Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 123–44, 167–77.
39. David H. Stark, The Yakuza Japanese Crime Incorporated (Ph.D. thesis, University of Michigan, 1981), pp. 62–131.
40. Peter Hill, The Japanese Mafia (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 65–91.
Volume III: Organized Crime and the Penetration of Markets
41. Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia (Harvard University Press), pp. 195–225.
42. John Landesco, Organized Crime in Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 1929), ch. 2.
43. Annelise Graebner Anderson, The Business of Organised Crime (California: Hoover Press, 1979), pp. 50–74.
44. James B. Jacobs and Ellen Peters, ‘Labor Racketeering: The Mafia and the Unions’, Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research, 2003, 30, 229–82.
45. Barbara Alexander, ‘The Rational Racketeer: Pasta Protection in Depression Era Chicago’, Journal of Law and Economics, 1997, 40, 175–202.
46. P. Reuter, ‘Racketeers as Cartel Organizers’, in H. Alexander and G. Caiden (eds.), Political and Economic Perspectives on Organized Crime (D. C. Heath, 1984), pp. 49–65.
47. A. A. Block, ‘The Origins of Fuel Racketeering: The Americans and the "Russians" in New York’, in P. Williams (ed.), Russian Organised Crime: The New Threat? (Frank Cass, 1997), pp. 156–76.
48. Yiu K. Chu, The Triads as Business (Routledge, 2000), pp. 53–76, 83–106.
49. Timothy Frye, ‘Private Protection in Russia and Poland’, AJPS, June 2002, 572–84.
50. Hing, L. S. Hing, ‘Casino Politics, Organized Crime and the Post-Colonial State in Macau’, Journal of Contemporary China, 2005, 14, 43, 207–24.
51. Ivan Light, ‘The Ethnic Vice Industry, 1880–1944’, American Sociological Review, 1977, 42, 464–79.
52. Steven D. Levitt and Sudhir Venkatesh, ‘An Economic Analysis Of A Drug-Selling Gang’s Finances’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2000, 115, 3, 755–89.
53. D. Steffensmeier and J. T. Ulmer, ‘Number Gambling: Black and White Control of Numbers Gambling: A Cultural Asset–Social Capital View’, American Sociological Review, 2006, 71, 1, 123–56.
54. Salvatore Coluccello and Simon Massey, ‘Out of Africa: The Human Trade Between Libya and Lampedusa’, Trends in Organized Crime, 2007, 10, 77–90.
Volume IV: Organized Crime and Popular Culture, States and Terrorism
55. David E. Ruth, Inventing the Public Enemy: The Gangster in American Culture, 1918–1934 (University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 118–43.
56. Federico Varese, ‘The Secret History of Japanese Cinema: The Yakuza Movies’, Global Crime, 2006, 7, 1, 107–26.
57. Olga Matich, ‘Mobster Gravestones in 1990s Russia’, Global Crime, 2006, 7, 1, 79–104.
58. Salvatore Lupo, ‘The Allies and the Mafia’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 1997, 2, 1, 21–33.
59. John Landesco, Organized Crime in Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 1929), pp. 169–89.
60. A. A. Block, ‘A Modern Marriage of Convenience: A Collaboration Between Organized Crime and US Intelligence’, in R. J. Kelly (ed.), Organized Crime: A Global Perspective (Rowman & Littlefield, 1986), pp. 58–77.
61. K.-L. Chin and R. Godson, ‘Organized Crime and the Political-Criminal Nexus in China’, Trends in Organized Crime, 2006, 9, 3, 5–44.
62. Carlo Morselli and Katia Petit, ‘Law-Enforcement Disruption of a Drug Importation Network’, Global Crime, 2007, 8, 109–30.
63. James Jacobs and Alex Hortis, ‘NYC as an Organized Crime Fighter: The Work of the Trade Waste Commission’, New York Law School Law Review, 1998, 42, 1069–92.
64. Carlo Morselli, ‘Scrutinizing RICO’, Critical Criminology, 2004, 12, 351–69.
65. Peter Hill, P, ‘Heisei Yakuza’, Social Science Japan Journal, 2003, 6, 1–18.
66. Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider, ‘The Mafia and Al Qaeda: Violent and Secretive Organizations in Comparative and Historical Perspective’, American Anthropologist, 2002, 104, 3, 776–82.
67. Tamara Makarenko, ‘The Crime Terror Continuum: Tracing the Interplay Between Transnational Organized Crime and Terrorism’, Global Crime, 2004, 6, 1, 129–45.
68. Federico Varese, ‘How Mafias Migrate: The Case of the `Ndrangheta in Northern Italy’, Law and Society Review, 2006, 40, 2, 411–44.
69. K. Chu, ‘Hong Kong Triads after 1997’, Trends in Organized Crime, 2005, 8, 3, 5–12.
70. Anton Weenink and Franca van der Laan, ‘The Search for the Russian Mafia: Central and Eastern European Criminals in the Netherlands, 1989–2005’, Trends in Organized Crime, 2007, 10, 4, 57–76.
71. Peter Reuter, ‘The Decline of the American Mafia’, The Public Interest, 1995, 120, 89–99.
72. S. Zhang and K.-L. Chin, ‘The Declining Significance of Triad Societies in Transnational Illegal Activities: A Structural Deficiency Perspective’, British Journal of Criminology, 2003, 43, 469–88.
Biography
Federico Varese is Professor of Criminology and a Fellow of Linacre College, University of Oxford. He is the Director of the University’s Extra-legal Governance Institute and editor of a leading journal, Global Crime (Taylor & Francis). He is the author of The Russian Mafia, 2nd edn. (OUP, 2005) and many articles and book chapters. He is a contributor to The Times Literary Supplement and also writes occasionally for The Times and the London Review of Books.
