Word: ianni
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This view of organized crime has been accepted rather generally. In 1971, however, Francis A.J. Ianni challenged this conception in "A Family Business," a study of an organized crime "family" in New York City's Little Italy. Ianni asserts that criminal syndicates should be viewed as social and kinship organizations, rather than formal ones. He viewed Italian-American criminal syndicates as a form of social organization patterned by tradition and responsive to the Italian-American urban culture. As persisting social systems, Ianni notes, organized crime syndicates must function as integral parts of the surrounding society. Thus Ianni looked at organized...
Father Louis Gigante, a fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Politics this week, grew up in the area Ianni wrote about. He also disputes the traditional view that organized crime is a tightly disciplined structure dedicated to evil. As an example of the beneficial effects of organized crime, Father Gigante has said that the only way his father could get money to pay for an operation was to go to a loan shark...
THERE IS ONE MAIN problem with the Gigante and Ianni accounts of the role of organized crime in Italian communities. In his book, Ianni never discussed narcotics trafficking. Similarly both Father Gigante and the Italian American Civil Rights League deny that organized crime as they know it is involved with drugs. According to Father Gigante, any drug trafficking that is done by Italians is done separately from the traditional crime "family" structure...
...crumble and is weakening some of the once-powerful crime dynasties. According to Historian Humbert Nelli, the Mafiosi's respect for authority-a trait that used to cement loyalties-is decaying. For this reason, more and more Mafiosi are deciding to go straight. In one Mafia family that Ianni studied, only four out of 27 fourth-generation Italian-Americans are connected with organized crime. Of the remaining 23, one is a university professor, and all the rest are doctors, lawyers or legitimate businessmen...
...other force for change in the Mafia is less subtle. It is what Ianni calls "drastic action"-the kind being carried out on the streets of New York...