From Clans to Co-ops: Confiscated Mafia Land in Sicily

240 Pages·2017·7.332 MB·English

by  Theodoros Rakopoulos

From Clans to Co-ops
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The Human Economy
Series editors:
Keith Hart, University of Pretoria
John Sharp, University of Pretoria
Those social sciences and humanities concerned with the economy have
lost the confidence to challenge the sophistication and public dominance
of the field of economics. We need to give a new emphasis and direction
to the economic arrangements that people already share, while recog-
nising that humanity urgently needs new ways of organising life on the
planet. This series examines how human interests are expressed in our
unequal world through concrete economic activities and aspirations.
Volume 1
People, Money, and Power in the Economic Crisis:
Perspectives from the Global South
Edited by Keith Hart & John Sharp
Volume 2
Economy for and against Democracy
Edited by Keith Hart and John Sharp
Volume 3
Gypsy Economy:
Romani Livelihoods and Notions of Worth in the 21st Century
Edited by Micol Brazzabeni, Manuela Ivone da Cunha and Martin Fotta
Volume 4
From Clans to Co-ops:
Confiscated Mafia Land in Sicily
Theodoros Rakopoulos
Volume 5
Money in a Human Economy
Edited by Keith Hart
Volume 6
Money at the Margins:
Global Perspectives on Technology, Financial Inclusion and Design
Edited by Bill Maurer, Smoki Musaraj, and Ivan Small
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From Clans to Co-ops
Confiscated Mafia Land in Sicily
░ ░ ░
Theodoros Rakopoulos
berghahn
N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com

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Published in 2018 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2018 Theodoros Rakopoulos
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rakopoulos, Theodoros, author.
Title: From clans to co-ops : confi scated Mafi a land in Sicily / Theodoros
Rakopoulos.
Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2017. | Series: The human economy ;
volume 4 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2016053201 (print) | LCCN 2017004496 (ebook) | ISBN
9781785334009 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781785336065 (eBook)
Subjects: LCSH: Cooperative societies--Italy--Sicily. | Agriculture,
Cooperative--Italy--Sicily. | Mafi a--Italy--Sicily. | Land
use--Italy--Sicily.
Classifi cation: LCC HD3505.A3 S5365 2017 (print) | LCC HD3505.A3 (ebook) |
DDC 334.09458--dc23
LC record available at hjps://lccn.loc.gov/2016053201
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78533-400-9 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-78533-606-5 (open access ebook)
This open access ebook edition is supported by the University of Bergen.
This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution
Noncommercial No Derivatives 4.0 International license. The terms
of the license can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by-nc-nd/4.0/. For uses beyond those covered in the license contact
Berghahn Books.
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Contents
░
List of Illustrations and Tables vi
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1. Problems with Cooperatives 9
Chapter 2. The Anthropology of Co-ops, the Mafia and the Sicilian
Lens 35
Chapter 3. Cooperatives and the Historical Anti-mafia Movement 61
Chapter 4. Worldviews of Labour: Legality and Food Ideologies 84
Chapter 5. The Limits of ‘Bad Kinship’: Sicilian Anti-mafia Families 102
Chapter 6. The Use of Gossip: Setting Cooperative Boundaries 122
Chapter 7. ‘Wage Is Male – But Land Is a Woman’ 141
Chapter 8. Community Trouble: Cooperative Conundrum 159
Chapter 9. Divided by Land: Mafia and Anti-mafia Proximity 173
Conclusion. The Private Life of Political Cooperativism 190
Bibliography 199
Index 225
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Illustrations and Tables
░
Illustrations
Illustration 1.1. The view from the balcony of my apartment: via
Porta Palermo. 22
Illustration 1.2. Detail of the viletta: a monument. 24
Illustration 1.3. The mayor of a local village alongside two
members of Lavoro e Altro, in a confiscated winery. 25
Illustration 1.4. The entrance to the shared offices of the Falcone
and Borsellino cooperatives. 25
Illustration 1.5. The highway, with San Giovanni on the right;
above the village, notice the Mato Hill. 26
Illustration 1.6. Lunch break in the vineyards of Castello, during
harvest, in August. 26
Illustration 1.7. Members of the Lavoro e Altro co-op during a
lunch break, while they set up the co-op’s agriturismo. 27
Illustration 3.1. The entrance to the Casa del Popolo at Cembali. 65
Illustration 3.2. A banner on a wall of the Casa. 66
Illustration 3.3. The ‘stone of Barbato’ with a poem inscribed on
it, at the Portella della Ginestra site. 72
Illustration 3.4. Monument to the mafia’s victims in San
Giovanni. 73
Illustration 4.1. A manual worker (Adamo, with his daughter
Marella) and an administrator (Giusy) co-host a stand. 84
Illustration 7.1. Workers in the vineyards. 143
Illustration 7.2. Cigarette break in the vineyards. 144
Tables
Table 4.1. General Information about the Spicco Vallata
Cooperatives 87
Table 4.2. Pay and Membership Status in the Spicco Vallata
Cooperatives’ Workforce 99
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Illustrations and Tables vii
Table 4.3. General Information about Other Anti-mafia
Cooperatives 100
Table 7.1. Santoleone Grape Prices, in Eurocents 149
Table 7.2. Two Families’ Incomes 151
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Acknowledgments
░
A number of people have contributed to the making of this book. As one
of my two doctoral advisors, David Graeber, said at some point, we should
probably thank all the people we have ever met because our ideas always
come from our interlocutions with others. To my mind, he unwittingly
recalled George Seferis, a sound poet whose verse ‘our words are the off-
spring of many a people’ resonates with me. As much as it would make
sense to do exactly that and thank pretty much everyone I have ever met,
and particularly all the Sicilians I know, in a dadaist gesture, space con-
straints might be an issue. So I would need to keep it to the pragmatics of
this specific research and its academic making.
Of course, I need to express my gratitude to all those Sicilians who
shared so much of their lives with me in the context of my ethnographic
fieldwork and in the time since. I hope the narratives in this book do jus-
tice to their lives. The irony of anonymisation here, especially in such an
issue – anti-mafia – where safety is the ethnographer’s top priority, makes
it all the more uncomfortable that I cannot mention names. So it goes.
I also thank a number of academic colleagues. Again, I would need
to narrow my gratitude down to those who shared opinions on bits of
this book in written or performed in oral format – starting with those
who looked over this work in its original phase. Victoria Goddard, my
main advisor, stood like a mentor, providing ideas and much-needed
calm, with witty and/or poignant humour throughout the course of
writing this ethnography. Nobody knows this book like she does I am
deeply thankful to her. David Graeber was central to my development
as an academic, especially as second supervisor, starting from alerting
me to the wonderful meanings of this very anthropological phrase just
above. His help has been vital to complete this project and I am deeply
grateful to him. During my Goldsmiths years, a number of colleagues
there also shared points and arguments on parts of the work, including
Mao Mollona (who helped me get involved with the project in the first
place), Catherine Alexander, Steve Nugent, Frances Pine and Sophie Day.
I was blessed to work close to exceptional minds like David and Keith
Hart early in my career. Keith has been a constant source of inspiration
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Acknowledgments ix
and support, especially since early 2013, when I joined him in the Human
Economy project in South Africa. This book is, after all, one of many
outcomes of this ongoing, fascinating collective work. Since I first met
him in 2008, I started thinking of him as a living institution of sorts, and
I am happy to consider him a friend today. In late 2014 I met and, since
then, worked with another fantastic thinker, Bruce Kapferer, who also
supported the completion of this monograph – and whom I also thank
for his help.
Speaking of institutions, I am grateful to the Wenner-Gren Foundation
for Anthropological Research for funding the fieldwork of this research
with grant 7900 (and for uplifting my spirits); to the Wingate Scholarships
for their generous funding of part of the writing process; to the Royal
Anthropological Institute for support offered through the Sutasoma
award for outstanding anthropological research; and to Goldsmiths
Anthropology for two bursaries. I should also add Greece’s National
Centre for Books’ (EKEBI) fellowship, which implicitly reminded me how
right Geertz was in arguing that ethnography can be a literary genre.
Without all the above funding, this research would have been impossible.
Friends and colleagues in academia have read bits of this book. I am
deeply indebted to Anton Blok, Michael Herzfeld, and Chris Gregory; as
well as to Jeff Pratt, Don Nonini, Sarah Ashwin, Sharryn Kasmir, Patrick
LaViolette, Gabriela Vargas-Cetina, Jeff Cole, Susana Narotzky, John A.
Davis, Evthimios Papataxiarchis, Mark Holmström, Johnny Parry, Sylvia
Yunko Yanagisako, Naor Ben-Yehoyada, Chris Hann, Don Kalb, Gavin
Smith, Alan Abramson, John Sharp, Dino Palumbo, and Umberto Santino.
Of course, deepest thanks go to Jane and Peter Schneider, whose sympa-
thy, help and support matches my admiration for their work and life com-
mitment to Sicily. I would also like to thank friends and colleagues from
the three sites this project has been stationed in (alongside its maker) –
London, Pretoria and Bergen – who have been my cohort group, and
whose companionship and camaraderie I would like to openly acknowl-
edge: Olivia Swift, Eeva Kesküla, Sarah O’Neill, Luna Glucksberg, Liz Saleh,
Veronica Barassi, Tim Martindale, Martin Fotta, Jessie Sklair, Nandera
Mhando, Maka Suarez, Patricia Matos, Dimitra Kofti, Giovanni Orlando,
Michael Hoffman, Francisco Calafate and Diego Orlando (for their fantas-
tic photos), Kostas Aivaliotis, the Egalitarianism group in Norway (Bjørn
Bertelsen, Knut Rio, Axel Rudi, Ale Zagato, Martin Hjortsberg, Maria Styve,
Mari Korsbrekke) and the Human Economy group in South Africa (espe-
cially Vito Laterza, Ted Powers, Tijo Salverda, Marina Martin). The same
goes for people we worked with in seminars, on panels and in more infor-
mal conduct and who have shared thoughts on this Sicilian ethnogra-
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x Acknowledgments
phy’s main issues – land management, labour ideologies, mafia life, food
and foodways, wealth. They include Thomas Eriksen, Keir Martin, Valeria
Siniscalchi, Krista Harper, Caroline Counihan, Andrea Muehlebach, the
late Olivia Harris, Emma Tarlo, Dorothy Zinn, Cris Shore, Mara Benadusi,
Heath Cabot, Paula Silvio, Antony Sorge, Luisa Steur, Eli Schober, Ruy
Blanes, Irini Papadaki, Giorgos Aggelopoulos, Alexandra Bakalaki. Thank
you all. Let’s keep the conversation going.
I should also thank those people who, in some ways, introduced me to
Sicily: Paola, Piero, Gianmichele, Alessio, and Nadia.
A final and deepest thanks goes to all my friends and family who
supported and sympathised with this project. You know who you are,
very well indeed, but the names of Stergios and Antonis should be men-
tioned. Please forgive me for being the annoying anthropologist with that
argument opening (‘it’s complicated’) in virtually each and every type of
conversation.
The book is dedicated to cooperativists and cooperationists – all those
people in Sicily and beyond, who believe in and engage with the princi-
ples of cooperation. Labour is to be shared. The fruit of some intellectual
labour on co-ops is this book. Hope you like it.
This open access library edition is supported by the University of Bergen. Not for resale.