ABSTRACT

Criminal organisations have the ability to exert secret power – governance over the community and inhibition of opposition (omertà). Traditionally, omertà has been attributed to fear or passivity. Here, a model grounded in different premises, Intracultural Appropriation Theory (ICAT), stresses the central role of culture in sustaining relations of domination between groups. Specifically, ICAT contends that non-state agents achieve legitimacy among people by claiming to embody cultural values shared within the community. In the case of Italian organised crime, criminal organisations’ adherence to values of masculine honour bestows legitimacy on their actions, enabling them to exert secret power. We report evidence in support of this proposition, and derive a new formulation of omertà focussing on social identity, emotions and social change beliefs. We suggest that the theory contributes to a new perspective for the analysis of culture, political action, and honour, and that it should generalise in other contexts and countries.

摘要

犯罪组织有能力行使秘密权力-对社区的治理和对反对派的压制（omertà）。传统上，将omertà归因于恐惧或消极情绪。这里有一个基于不同前提的模型，即“文化内部占有理论”（ICAT），它强调了文化在维持群体之间的统治关系中的核心作用。具体而言，ICAT认为，非国家行为者声称自己体现了社区内共享的文化价值观，从而在人们中间实现了合法性。就意大利有组织犯罪而言，犯罪组织对男性荣誉价值观的坚持使他们的行为具有合法性，使他们能够发挥秘密权力。我们报告了支持这一主张的证据，并得出了一种新的omertà提法，重点关注社会认同，情感和社会变化信念。