This remarkable book examines the interrelated histories of the Sicilian mafia since World War II and of the more recent civic movement fighting against it. In so doing, it reconstructs what is known about the covert structures of political and social power in Sicily during the Cold War and the following decade.

Jane and Peter Schneider are ideally placed to write this history of the present, having been engaged in long-term ethnographic and archival fieldwork in western Sicily since the sixties. They bring to this study their knowledge of the terrain, their familiarity with Italian and foreign reflections on the mafia phenomenon, and their eclectic intellectual outlook—spanning anthropology, history, and political science.

This well-researched book is divided in two parts. The first chronicles the genesis of the Sicilian mafia, its sociocultural background, the various analyses of this social formation over the last 50 years, and the mafia’s involvement in the political administration of Sicily. The second part focuses on the resistance to organized crime by a significant portion of the local population, after decades of indifference to—if not collusion with—this parallel system of power.

As the Schneiders discuss, what makes it possible for the mafia to grow and prosper is precisely its ability to use violence, or the threat of violence, and political influence to intimidate, pillage, bribe, and corrupt the productive forces of society, from small shopkeepers to major construction companies. Their case in point is a detailed and harrowing analysis of the transformation of Palermo’s urban landscape since World War II and the mafia involvement in it. The book opens with an analysis of the “sack” of the city in the 1950s, when an unregulated and undercapitalized rush into rebuilding after the war saw the mafia and its political and economic associates profit enormously from development schemes, in particular the decision to abandon the ruin-filled historic center to build in the countryside abutting the city. Public parks and protected areas were cemented over and filled with unregulated single-family houses, and century-old orange groves were destroyed to make room for high-rise building compounds lacking such basic infrastructures as public transportation, reliable water, and shops. One quite disturbing photo in the book shows an 18th-century villa totally surrounded by apartment houses several times its height. The mafia profited twice from this situation: initially through the construction racket, and in the long run because the living conditions of the great majority of the popular classes caused considerable anomie in the young, who came to see the mafia as the only viable outlet for their pent-up anger and directionless lives.

Although the first part is commendable for its broad range and detailed knowledge of the material, it is the second half that makes this book rise above the many studies of the Sicilian mafia produced in recent years. By investigating the genesis of the antimafia movement, its accomplishments, shortcomings, and prospects, the Schneiders successfully extend their analysis beyond an examination of the deep roots of the mafia’s cultural legitimacy. They combine archival research with participant-observation and ethnographic interviews (in particular with middle-class, educated informants) to provide an accurate understanding of how an urban, enlightened, and socially engaged middle class feels living in a world of collusion between an often impotent, if not complicit, state and an aggressive parallel power, able and willing to usurp collective wealth for its own profit and to eliminate anybody trying to interfere. In this second part readers find the ethnographic sensibility that makes it possible to understand the first widespread hostility to the mafia as reaction to the successive brutal murders of the high-profile state officials most active in fighting the criminal organization: General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, the national high commissioner against the Mafia, Pio La Torre, the leader of the regional Communist Party (both killed in 1982), and two extremely popular antimafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino (murdered in 1992). Only after these murders (in particular those of the two prosecutors) did a considerable portion of the local population realize that it could no longer remain silent. The Schneiders chronicle in detail the formation of the many social groups and political initiatives produced by this new resolve. They also chronicle the continuous bickering, turf wars, and political intrigues among the various players in the antimafia camp. In particular, they discuss the two areas identified by the antimafia movement as crucial for any social change: the education of the next generation and the transformation of the urban landscape. The rationale behind this focus is that only by shaping the antimafia imagination of the youth and transforming the practices of everyday life can a reborn civic society rid itself of such parasitic and paralyzing power. Although their title suggests the possibility of reversing the mafia’s influence on the public sphere, their precise analysis of the microphysics of power relations within myriad antimafia groups paints a much bleaker picture of the prospects for sustaining (let alone winning) a concerted fight against the colossal pull and longue durèe influence exerted by the mafia.

The main strength of this book is its combined ethnographic and political-economic analysis of a contemporary city. The Schneiders do for Palermo what Mike Davis did for Los Angeles in his City of Quartz (Verso, 1990). But where Davis relied mostly on written and archival sources to provide his analysis, the Schneiders combine their archival work with an exquisite ethnography, providing readers with the lived experience of the people forced to inhabit a territory shaped by the arrogance of the covert structures of political and social power.