Italy has long been thought of as a terra di mezzo, a land in between, a crossroads where life “above” exists together with life “below.” Italy’s underworld is taken as a given fact, and enjoys a global, if not romanticized, reputation. This volume is a first-of-its-kind study that explores how crime and illegality have served to make modern Italy and Italians. Its chapters set into relief “crime Italian style”: a distinct formation comprised of the porousness between licit and illicit and the malleability of illegality that has distinguished Italy as a nation-state since Unification. From courtrooms to television screens, and mafia dons to political activists, this volume delves into Italy’s criminal patrimony as well as the entanglements between Italian politics and organized crime, how ideas about crime and criminality cross borders and become attached to people, and how the representational force of the media continues to transform who or what is marked as criminal. This volume reconnects Italy to its heritage of crime and punishment to offer a new take on modern Italian identity that recognizes its relationship to illegality as a central, rather than peripheral, attribute.
