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240 Pages·2017·7.332 MB·English
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From Clans to Co-ops This open access library edition is supported by the University of Bergen. Not for resale. 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 This open access library edition is supported by the University of Bergen. Not for resale. 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 This open access library edition is supported by the University of Bergen. Not for resale. 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. This open access library edition is supported by the University of Bergen. Not for resale. 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 This open access library edition is supported by the University of Bergen. Not for resale. 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 This open access library edition is supported by the University of Bergen. Not for resale. 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 This open access library edition is supported by the University of Bergen. Not for resale. 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 This open access library edition is supported by the University of Bergen. Not for resale. 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- This open access library edition is supported by the University of Bergen. Not for resale. 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.

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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.