The Secret Power of Criminal Organizations by Giovanni A. Travaglino & Lisbeth Drury

Author:Giovanni A. Travaglino & Lisbeth Drury
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030441616
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Regional Identity and Honor Codes

We have argued that members of criminal organizations mobilize meaning and values related to masculine honor to sustain their position of dominance in society. Through their actions and statements, they emphasize the importance of these values for the local community, representing themselves as what the community stands for. Such dynamics are an important source of legitimacy for criminal organizations because they lead residents of local communities to perceive members of criminal organizations as belonging to “us,” rather than as deviant outsiders (cf. Horowitz, 1983).

Prior research has shown that the cultural code of masculine honor is an important component of what it means to be southern Italian (Knight & Nisbett, 2007; Travaglino, Abrams, & Randsley de Moura, 2014). We, thus, investigated the association between masculine honor and identity in a study of 170 individuals from southern Italy (Travaglino et al., 2015). More specifically, we examined the role played by two different group memberships, a southern regional group (i.e., being Campani) and the national group (i.e., being Italian). We reasoned that, whereas valuing a regional identity may reflect more strongly local values and traditions of masculine honor, such values would be less relevant for a national identity. In other words, we predicted that cultural values of masculine honor sustaining criminal organizations’ secret power would be associated more strongly with a regional, rather than national, identity.

Results from the study supported this idea. Individuals who valued their regional identity more strongly also reported a stronger endorsement of masculine honor values, and subsequently reported lower intentions to oppose criminal organizations collectively. Conversely, valuing a national identity was negatively associated with endorsement of these values, and subsequently higher intentions to oppose criminal organizations. These findings suggest that members of criminal organizations, by mobilizing meaning and values related to masculine honor, may be successful in portraying themselves as part of a valued local group membership, thus limiting opposition from local communities.

It should be noted that, in this study, there was no direct link between regional identity and lack of opposition against criminal organizations. Rather, it is only through the values and meaning related to masculine honor that regional identity was linked to support for criminal organizations. Mobilizing different beliefs linked to this identity should result in different outcomes. This proposition was tested in Travaglino et al. (2017)’s large empirical study of southern Italian adolescents already mentioned above.

In Travaglino et al. (2017), in addition to the measures described earlier, we also measured individuals’ adherence to a “social change” set of beliefs (Abrams, 1990; Abrams & Grant, 2012; Abrams et al., 2019). The social change belief structure refers to individuals’ indorsement of the idea that the group’s situation may improve, and the ingroup free itself from a dominant outgroup, only if there is a major societal change that alters the structure of the intergroup relationships. The measure of social change beliefs—adapted from previous research (Abrams & Grant, 2012)—included items such as “The situation in Campania can improve only if the Camorra is defeated completely” and “People in Campania will only improve their situation if the Camorra is completely eliminated.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.