The specific availability for this course is not currently known. If you would like to know if this course will be offered during your session, please contact us.
The course begins with an analysis of the roots of the Italian mafia that lay within the over reliance on codes of honor and on traditional family values as a resolution to all conflicts. Historically we begin in the Middle Ages with the control of agricultural estates by the mafia, the exploitation of peasants, and the consequent migration of Sicilians towards the United States at the end of the 19th century.
We then focus on the controversial relationship between the mafia and the fascist state, and the decline of organized crime under fascism. During the Second World War the Mafia resurfaced after American and Allied forces landed in Sicily and freed many of the Mafiosi that had been imprisoned by the regime. Beginning in the late 50s the mafia was centralized into one organization called Cosa Nostra that controlled the traffic of drugs from Sicily to the United States.
A discussion of the major protagonists , in the flight against the Cosa Nostra such as Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borselino will be an integral part of this course. The course will end with a discussion of contemporary organized crime in Italy.
