Structure, agency and organizations are the basis of society. All organizations involve relationships between individuals, including different theories that purport to be explanations for how those relationships work. This is true whether the organization be government, prison, school or the Girl Scouts. The Sicilian Mafia also represents an organization with a certain structure, agency and interaction among members. Two sociology theories of particular usefulness when it comes to exploring the relationships of politics, family and authority that exist within the Mafia are Weberian and Symbolic Interactionism. The Sicilian Mafia is a clandestine organization involving thousands of members divided into different families of Italian ancestry. The key to the Mafia’s overwhelmingly successful enterprises is its profound structure tightly bonded “family” relationship among members, “Held together by bonds rooted in kinship and cemented by ritual, the Mafia is imagined to be a cohesive force, ruling over the domain of organized crime and overwhelming any who resist its hegemony, whether competitor or victim” (Bryan’s, 1999, 1).
In Sicily, the Mafia is a tightly-knit organization with little trust of outsiders much like many corporations do not trust outside competitors or government agencies (think tobacco companies, Microsoft, etc.). The politics (structure and agency) of the Mafia is particularly well-suited to both a Weberian and a Symbolic Interactionist perspective.
The political order is established by the Mafia through a variety of methods in order to exercise or acquire power over others, including extortion, bribes, blackmail, and destruction of property and persons. The Mafia, in its power, authority, hierarchy, ceremonies, rituals and symbols readily lends itself to either a Weberian or Symbolic Interactionist explanation of social groups and human interaction and relationships. Weber argued that burea...