Family without familism: parental networks in Italian mafias

Abstract This article re-examines the role of the ‘family’ in Italian mafias by challenging both organisational and culturalist interpretations. Drawing on long-term empirical research based on judicial documents, police records and interviews covering Italian mafias and Italo-American groups from the late nineteenth century to the present, the authors propose a re-conceptualisation of the mafia family. Rather than a natural or fixed organisational unit, the family is understood as a flexible social infrastructure embedded in civil society and strategically mobilised by criminal actors. Focusing on two historical case studies – the Morello family in New York and the Giuliano clan in Naples – the article shows how kinship networks function as resources for survival, alliance building, market control and the reproduction of criminal power. The analysis moves beyond the traditional paradigm of ‘familism’ and rejects ethnocultural explanations of ‘mafiosity’, concluding instead that family ties become criminal only when exploited as instruments of power, governance and economic co-ordination within illegal markets.