Terrorism, organised crime and the biopolitics of violence

Abstract

Despite the lack of consensus on a broadly accepted definition of terrorism, a vast majority of scholars agree that terrorist violence is intrinsically political in contrast to organised crime, which is viewed as mainly profit-driven. This article critically examines this widely accepted distinction and contends that it rests on a narrow definition of the “political”, which circumscribes political violence to organisations seeking to overthrow the government, change the political system or alter the boundaries of a state. Drawing on a Foucauldian biopolitical understanding of the political, we argue that the pursuit of economic goals for criminal organisations cannot be disentangled from practices of governmentality which, through the production of disciplinary and regulatory norms, contribute to the construction of distinctive subjectivities and political orders. In order to advance this argument, we focus on the case of the Neapolitan Camorra as a biopolitical actor and contend that its use of violence aimed at the creation of “docile bodies” able and willing to sustain its system and reproduce its order not only challenges the distinction between “political” terrorism and “profit-driven” organised crime, but also has implications for the study of terrorism. In particular, the analysis carried out in this article suggests the need to investigate biopolitical practices beyond a narrow focus on the state by exploring the largely neglected biopolitics of violence of non-state armed groups and examining whether this focus may open new paths for the transformation of conflicts marked by terrorist violence.

Keywords:

• terrorism
• organised crime
• biopolitics
• violence
• Camorra

Introduction

Thousands of books, articles and policy papers have been published on terrorism in the past decade examining myriad aspects of the violence and adopting numerous different approaches. However, they often have one thing in common: most of these scholarly and less scholarly works begin with a simple statement: terrorism is very hard to define and there is no agreement on its definition (see, for example, Wardlaw 1989; Weinberg and Davis 1989; Hoffman 2006; Wilkinson 2001, among numerous others). Over the same period, there has been an increased interest in organised crime, and there too, despite disagreement on how organised crime should be approached and understood, most scholars begin their analysis by highlighting the difficulty in defining organised crime, lamenting an “I know it when I see it” approach (Roth and Sever 2007, 903).

Despite these definitional quagmires, these two forms of violence are also marked by two definitional certainties: Terrorism, scholars agree, is political violence, while organised crime is violence carried out for lucrative purposes. Indeed, there seems to be general agreement that these two forms of violence – that can often share several characteristics, including organisational and tactical overlaps – are clearly distinct, differentiated by their ultimate goal. As summarised by leading terrorism scholar Bruce Hoffman (2006, 36), “the fundamental aim of the terrorist's violence is ultimately to change ‘the system' – about which the ordinary criminal, of course, couldn't care less”.

The aim of this article is to examine this broadly accepted distinction and investigate whether terrorism and organised crime are categories of violence as impermeable as they may appear. To engage with this question, the first section shall begin by examining how scholars of terrorism on the one side, and criminologists on the other, have used the political/economic distinction as the principal way to distinguish their respective objects of enquiry. We shall then outline how scholars in both fields have begun to investigate the crossover between the two forms of violence and how this crossover is understood. As will become clear, although scholars see an increasing coming together of the two activities – with terrorists engaging in lucrative criminal activities to raise funds for their political campaigns, and organised gangs using terrorist tactics to ensure they can continue their profit-making activities – they are still understood as distinct forms of violence and still distinguished by the political/economic dichotomy.

In the second section, we examine this dichotomy in depth and show how it rests on a narrow definition of the “political”, which circumscribes political violence to organisations seeking to overthrow the government, change the political system, alter the boundaries of a state or, in some minor cases, demand changes in legislation. We argue that if a biopolitical understanding of the political is adopted – one that draws on the work of Michel Foucault – the political/economic distinction between terrorism and organised crime becomes blurred and the violence carried out by a criminal organisation such as the Camorra acquires a political nature. In particular, the argument will be advanced that the pursuit of economic goals for this organisation cannot be disentangled from the construction of a distinctive image of society and the disciplining of humans in their relations with each other.

In the final section of the article, we examine the implications of this analysis. We first discuss what such a broadening of the political means for the terrorism/organised crime distinction and then investigate the implications for the study of terrorism. Is terrorism also political in a biopolitical sense that, as we will argue, has so far been overlooked by terrorism scholars? What does this imply in terms of a future research agenda? What does it imply for policy-makers and third parties engaging with conflicts marked by terrorist violence? Using the violence of former republican paramilitaries in Northern Ireland as part of the Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD) to illustrate the argument, we will examine how investigating political violence in both its traditional and biopolitical forms may offer a useful framework to both scholars and practitioners grappling with violence that often long outdates peace processes.

Terrorism and organised crime: two definitional quagmires, one certain distinction

Although emerging via distinct historiographies, the categories of terrorism and organised crime are marked by similar definitional quagmires that many argue have to a greater and lesser extent held back these fields of investigation. ¹ Indeed, numerous scholars see the lack of definition of terrorism as a hurdle in its investigation, both conceptually and empirically (Wardlaw 1989, 3; Ganor 1998; Silke 2009, 36; Booth and Dunne 2011; see also Jackson 2008 for an extensive examination of advantages and disadvantages of establishing a definition). Meanwhile, the study of organised crime has been marked by not only an “I know it when I see it” approach that undermines consistent data gathering, but also by the controversial and problematic “alien conspiracy theory”, which “sees organised crime as an ethnically defined phenomenon,” such as with the Italian community in the United States (Hale 2005, 290).

Despite this broad lack of consensus in the two fields, in both cases scholars broadly agree that terrorism and organised crime have at their heart distinct motives that characterise them: politics for terrorism and profit from organised crime. Among over 100 definitions of terrorism analysed by Alex Schmid and Albert Jongman (1988, 2005), the second most common characteristic after violence (found in 83.5% of the definitions) was that it had political aims (65%). Indeed, terrorism's political nature is key to the definitions put forward by the field's leading scholars (see Crenshaw 2000; Hoffman 2006; Wilkinson 2001 among others), and in one of the most widely used definitions, Grant Wardlaw (1989, 16) sees terrorism as using violence to achieve “the political demands of the perpetrators”. Politics is also central to definitions put forward by governments and law enforcement agencies: for example, the Central Intelligence Agency defined terrorism in 1980 as “the threat or use of violence for political purposes”, while German law described it in 1985 as “the enduringly conducted struggle for political goals” (quoted in Schmid and Jongman 2005, 32–33).

Interestingly, critical approaches to terrorism have arguably stressed terrorism's political nature to an even greater extent than mainstream scholars or the policy world. Indeed, one of the main criticisms that the critical terrorism studies field has put forward of traditional approaches is that the latter has overemphasised terrorism's violent nature at the expense of its political nature by “paying insufficient attention to the wider conflict and its history, the broader social movement … the non-violent aspects of both oppositional movements and the state, and other types of violence, such as structural violence” – essentially the politics of the conflict (Jackson, Breen Smyth, and Gunning 2009, 218). ² Similarly, Ken Booth and Tim Dunne (2011, 19) believe that a “time-transcending” understanding of terrorism recognises it as “inflicting terror for political purposes”.

Thus, what emerges is a broad consensus regarding terrorism's political nature. This distinguishes it from organised crime, whose “essential motivation … is clear: business” (Hale et al. 2005, 292). Again, there is a broad consensus both among key criminologists and in legislation across the world that the essential characteristic defining organised crime is the desire to make a profit. Jay Albanese put forward a definition of organised crime in 2000 that

based on a consensus of writers over the course of the past three decades, would reveal as follows: “Organized crime is a continuing criminal enterprise that rationally works to profit from illegal activities; its continuing existence is maintained through the use of force, threats, monopoly control, and/or the corruption of public officials”. (Albanese quoted in Roth and Sever 2007, 903)

Similarly, the FBI defines organised crime as a “continuing conspiracy, having an organised structure, fed by fear and corruption and motivated by greed” (quoted in O'Brien and Yar 2008, 116).

This politics/economics distinction is seen by terrorism scholars as essential for understanding the nature of terrorism. This is best exemplified by this passage of Hoffman (2006, 36–37), which is worth quoting at length:

Like terrorists, criminals use violence as a means to attain a specific end. However, while the violent act itself may be similar – kidnapping, shooting, and arson, for example – the purpose or motivation clearly is different. Whether the criminal employs violence as a means to obtain money, to acquire material goods, or to kill or injure a specific victim for pay, he is acting primarily for selfish, personal motivations (usually material gain) … [T]he criminal is not concerned with influencing or affecting public opinion; he simply wants to abscond with his money or accomplish his mercenary task in the quickest and easiest way possible so that he may reap his reward and enjoy the fruits of his labours. By contrast, the fundamental aim of the terrorist's violence is ultimately to change “the system” – about which the ordinary criminal, of course, couldn't care less.

Hoffman (2006, 37) concludes by saying that the criminal pursues “egocentric goals” and “serves no cause at all, just his own personal aggrandizement and material satisfaction”, while “the terrorist is fundamentally an altruist: he believes that he is serving a ‘good' cause designed to achieve a greater good for a wider constituency – whether real or imagined.”

A similar distinction is put forward by critical scholars such as Richard Jackson, Lee Jarvis, Jeroen Gunning and Marie Breen Smyth, who, in their Terrorism: A Critical Introduction (2011, 116), begin their “minimal foundationalist” understanding of terrorism by stating:

Firstly, terrorism is ultimately a form of politically motivated violence. It is different, for example, from the criminal violence that accompanies the activities of those engaged in the transnational trafficking of illegal drugs, consumer products or humans for profit. It is also different from the extortion rackets, kidnappings and murders conducted by criminal organizations such as the Cosa Nostra.

It is thus terrorism's political motivation that distinguishes it from organised crime. Linked to this distinction between motives of politics and ones of profit is the fact that terrorist violence is seen as attention-seeking to further its political aim, while criminal organisations “desire a minimal amount of public attention for their activities” (Martin 2010, 314). Thus, the general consensus both in terrorism studies and in criminology appears to be that terrorism and organised crime are discrete activities primarily distinguished by their motive: one political, the other profit-driven.

Interestingly, a number of scholars from both fields have begun to investigate what appears to be an increasing collaboration and, to a certain extent, an overlap between terrorism and organised crime (Grabosky and Stohl 2010; Hutchinson and O'Malley 2007; Makarenko 2004; Picarelli 2006). The decline of state sponsorship for terrorist organisations is seen as one of the reasons why groups using terrorist violence have had to cooperate with criminal gangs to acquire weapons or take part in criminal activities to raise funds (Grabosky and Stohl 2010; Hutchinson and O'Malley 2007; Roth and Sever 2007). So the al-Qaeda network, for example, is believed to engage in numerous criminal activities such as credit card and identity fraud (Rabasa et al. 2006), while more traditional hierarchical organisations such as the IRA or the Red Brigades tended to fund themselves through bank robberies or extortion: “Terrorists and criminal organisations may exchange knowledge and commodities for mutual benefit” and, in some cases, “terrorists may abandon their political agendas and turn to conventional crime” (Grabosky and Stohl 2010, 7). An example of the latter can be found in some loyalist groups in Northern Ireland, in particular, the Ulster Defense Association (UDA), which allegedly turned to drug-dealing, with at least some members leaving the political agenda to one side (Silke 2000).

Meanwhile, organised crime has turned to using tactics associated with terrorism, in particular bomb attacks. The most striking use of terrorist tactics was made by the Sicilian Mafia in the early 1990s. In 1992, clans killed two key anti-mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, in attacks that “were more than just ‘hits', [where] the massive explosions themselves constituted a political statement, and were obviously intended to discourage further investigative activity” (Grabosky and Stohl 2010, 7). The assassinations were followed by further bombings a year later in Florence, Rome and Milan that left 10 people killed and 93 injured and damaged Florence's renowned Uffizi Gallery. Thus, the

Sicilian Mafia, [the Neapolitan] Camorra, and [the Calabrian] N'drangheta have used corruption, violence, and extortion to keep opponents not only from interfering with other criminal enterprises but also from being too public in their criticism, [and] assassinations, bombings, and other terrorist acts have been committed against politicians, journalists, and law enforcement officials. (Martin 2010, 322)

However, despite the apparent increased collaboration between the two types of organisations and their use of tactics commonly associated with the other, the categories of terrorism and organised crime are still kept as distinct by scholars. Organised crime may use terrorist tactics, but they do so “to achieve financial gains” (Newburn 2007, 873). Similarly, terrorists may act like ordinary criminals, but they do so to raise funds for their ultimately political goal. Indeed, some scholars argue that cooperation between the two types of organisations can only go so far, precisely because these forms of violence are intrinsically different. “Terrorism and crime are very different in their motivations and … therefore convergence is at best very infrequent. To the extent that interaction takes place, it is simply an alliance of convenience” (Grabosky and Stohl 2010, 7; see also Levi 2007). Such “relationships are temporary and/or parasitical rather than symbiotic” (Hutchinson and O'Malley 2007, 1096).

Even those scholars who argue that there is a crime-terror continuum (Makarenko 2004) or those, such as Gus Martin (2010, 314), who have created intermediate categories such as “criminal dissident terrorism” still believe it is necessary to separate the latter category into “profit-motivated traditional criminal enterprises” and the “politically motivated criminal-political enterprises”. Thus, once again, the politics/profit dichotomy is upheld. Before we examine the problem with this understanding of politics and investigate how organised crime can and often does more than engage in violence that “is not designed or intended to have consequences or create psychological repercussions beyond the act itself” (Hoffman 2006, 36), it is important to note that some scholars open the door to the possibility that organised crime may be more than an ungrounded, parasitic violence aimed at making a profit.

For example, Roth and Sever (2007) argue that to pursue their profit-making activities, criminal organisations use violence to sustain the status quo. Indeed, “it is often in the best interests of organised crime to keep … corruptible and weak leaders in power” (Roth and Sever 2007, 913). Since the clientele of organised crime “are, for the most part, ‘ordinary' folk who seek, or are forced to seek, alternative routes to satisfying needs unmet or proscribed by the legislatures of the countries they inhabit or pass through” (Hale et al. 2005, 292), it is in the interest of organised gangs to maintain the legislature in state for them to be able to continue to offer such alternative routes. Although the ultimate aim is again financial gain, this argument turns organised crime into a reactionary force working to sustain the status quo.

A definition of organised crime put forward by Europol offers another opening beyond the strict profit-seeking definitions commonly endorsed by law enforcement agencies. Indeed, the European Union's criminal intelligence agency defines organised crime as “having as its central goal, the pursuit of profit and/or power” (Newburn 2007, 406, emphasis added), thus positing power as a potentially independent goal from profit and arguably falling in the domain of politics. This definition suggests that the distinction between terrorism and organised crime crucially rests on the understanding of politics that is adopted, although, so far, the scholarly and policy communities have failed to investigate this question.

This is the key aim of this article. Accordingly, in the next section, we explore the possibility that the distinction between terrorism as an ideological endeavour aimed at advancing a different political vision and organised crime as an instrumental enterprise aimed at generating profit can only be sustained if a “classic” understanding of politics – in the sense used by Michel Foucault – is embraced. Drawing on examples from the case of the Neapolitan Camorra, we will argue that this understanding is a limiting one, which fails to grasp the biopolitical dimensions of organised crime and terrorism.

Politics, biopolitics and the Camorra

In his work on governmentality and biopolitics, Foucault (1978, 2003, 2009, 2010) introduces us to two different understandings of politics. The classic understanding, which was dominant until the beginning of the nineteenth century, conceived of politics as the pursuit of the common good. The latter was originally understood as a worldly translation of God's divine order and, subsequently, with the process of secularisation, as an immanent expression of the political community. In both cases, politics revolved around the notion of law as an instantiation of a well-defined set of values, be they the expressions of a transcendentally sanctioned order or of an immanently validated set of norms and procedures which purported a certain idea of the good life. Accordingly, the related sovereign power which came with this notion of politics was primarily one of punishment for transgression of the law. This manifested itself as a “power of deduction,” where the injury for the violation of the constituted order was redressed by appropriating “a portion of the wealth, a tax of products, goods and services, labor and blood, levied on the subjects. Power in this instance was essentially a right of seizure: of things, time, bodies, and ultimately life itself” (Foucault 1978, 136).

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, a new idea of politics begins to emerge. Its primary focus begins to shift from the common good to the population as a subject of management and intervention. As Foucault puts it, the new focus is on a “complex composed of men [sic] and things”, that is,

men in their relations, their links, their imbrication with those things that are wealth, resources, means of subsistence, the territory with its specific qualities, climate, irrigation, fertility, and so on; men in their relation to those other things that are customs, habits, ways of acting and thinking. (Foucault 2000, 208–209)

This shift has two important implications. First, sovereign power no longer manifests itself solely as a power of deduction, but becomes also a power of production, whose main goal is to “incite, reinforce, control, monitor, optimise, and organise the forces under it” (Foucault 1978, 136). Second, this power no longer expresses itself exclusively through the law. For Foucault (1978, 144), in fact, “we should not be deceived by all the Constitutions framed throughout the world since the French Revolution … a whole continual and clamorous legislative activity”. The law, he contends, “operates more and more as a norm and … the judicial institution is increasingly incorporated into a continuum of apparatuses (medical, administrative and so on) whose functions are for the most part regulatory” (Foucault 1978, 144).

Hence, the centrality of sovereign power (as a power of deduction) to this emerging understanding of politics is progressively compounded by the emergence of disciplinary and regulatory mechanisms. These mechanisms do not rest on the power to enforce the law and punish its transgression, but on the disciplinary power of a series of institutions which emerge at the beginning of the nineteenth century – the police, schools, workshops, barracks, hospitals – as well as of regulatory practices – such as health insurance systems, hygiene rules, patterns of consumption, reproduction and education (Foucault 2003, 250–251). These regimes are not directly enacted through a conception of the common good guarded by the law – that is, through a direct exercise of sovereign power – but through processes of internalisation of norms, codes, models of behaviour which directly invest life. In this politics-turned-biopolitics, these regimes “are designed to maximize and extract forces” (Foucault 2003, 246), and to inscribe a specific order onto the body which may enable “the optimization of its capabilities, the extortion of its forces, the parallel increase of its usefulness and its docility, [and] its integration into systems of efficient and economic controls” (Foucault 1978, 139). This transformation, to be sure, does not mean that sovereign power as a power of deduction is “replaced” by sovereign power as a power of production. Sovereign power retains its right to kill, but exercises it against those bodies or – to use Foucault's terminology – “body-species” which endanger the ability of the “body-species” under its control to produce, grow and proliferate either because they are the expression of contending sovereign powers (Foucault 2003, 239–263) or because, expanding Foucault's argument, they fail to abide by the disciplinary and regulatory powers of biopolitics.

In this biopolitical understanding of politics, sovereignty is no longer exclusively the exercise of a presence aimed at the advancement of the common good. It is also a form of absence informed by a principle of self-limitation of governmental authority whereby the goal of management of life and extraction of forces is better achieved by letting the subjects govern themselves through disciplinary and regulatory mechanisms (Foucault 2010). In this perspective, the state's sovereign power should not be understood solely as a vertical and monopolistic line of authority, but also as a framework of authority which encompasses disciplinary and regulatory mechanisms and which, bringing Foucault's argument a step further, involves seemingly contending forms of authority which can serve the scope of a better and more efficient management of the population.

These reflections appear particularly relevant in the case of the Neapolitan Camorra, one of the oldest criminal organisations in Italy, which has long been “considered and used [by the Italian state] as a sort of social block to maintain public order and to guarantee, through its illegal profits, the survival of whole sections of the population, which otherwise were destined to die of hunger because of the lack of legal jobs” (Roberti 2008, 44). The Camorra has historically been a form of “extra-legal governance” (Varese 2009), originating in some of the most economically and socially depressed southern areas of the country. It has been progressively strengthened by the incapacity and, most of all, the unwillingness of the Italian state to undermine its power to control large sections of the populations through fear, resignation, but also often through consensus via the provision of goods and services that the state is increasingly unable to provide. This has enabled the Camorra to translate its economic power into political power – for instance, by controlling huge amounts of votes – with the effect of further strengthening its position vis-à-vis the state. It would be thus highly misleading to consider the Camorra just as “a collection of purely parasitic, extortionary thugs” (Varese 2009, 262). It is “an organisation that provides genuine services, such as access to cheap loans, a degree of competition among firms, and enforcement of economic agreements”; an organisation that, along the years, “has forged a set of relationships of mutual advantage with significant sectors of the local and national economy” (Varese 2009, 262).

Now, there is no doubt that the camorristi (the members of the Camorra) pursue an economic goal and that this “mutual advantage” which has benefited large sectors of the “legal” economy has come at the price of undermining “fairness, freedom to choose, property rights, and a rule-based system of social relations” (Varese 2009, 262). Most of all, it has come at the price of a casualty rate worthy of a civil war. It is estimated that between 1979 and 2005, the Camorra caused 3656 deaths – slightly more than the conflict in Northern Ireland over the period 1969–1998 (3500 deaths) (Pizzini-Gambetta 2009, 267). Equally, there is no doubt that although the Camorra is against the state, its aim is not to overthrow the state, as it is in the limits and logics of the sovereign power of the Italian state that the Camorra finds its sustenance and raison d'être.

However, the relation between the Camorra and the state is not the purely parasitic relation confined to economic goals that terrorism scholars tend to ascribe to organised crime in their attempt to distinguish it from terrorist violence. It is a relation of mutuality, which goes beyond the economic dimension and invests society as a whole through the production of norms, ideas, practices, values, codes of behaviour and specific understandings of what counts as true or false. The Camorra, in other words, is a mechanism of governance/governmentality which has contributed to the production of subjectivities and of a distinctive political vision, albeit one not articulated and presented as such. This, to be sure, does not mean that the Camorra is an exclusively biopolitical power. Quite the opposite, the Camorra is a prime example of a sovereign power whose “right of seizure” includes the exaction of taxes (in the form of pizzo, the “protection money” extorted by the Camorra from businesses), wealth (by burdening the economy with costs of insecurity which negatively impact on the possibility of economic growth and development), health (by poisoning lands and waters with the lucrative business of illegal dumping of toxic waste), and ultimately life itself.

While acknowledging the Camorra's “sovereign power of deduction”, it is on its “biopolitical power of production” that we will focus in the remainder of this article in order to bring to the fore the inherently (bio)political nature of this organisation. To this end, let us start by considering the following quote from a letter written by a young inmate in a juvenile prison:

I want to become a boss. I want to have supermarkets, stores, factories, I want to have women. I want three cars, I want respect when I go into a store, I want to have warehouses all over the world. And then I want to die. I want to die like a man, like someone who truly commands. I want to be killed. (cited in Saviano 2007, 114)

This brief passage encapsulates more than a quest for profit: it articulates a distinctive vision of life in which profit obtained by being an active member of the organisation is a means to “women”, “respect” and an honourable death, all of which conjures up a specific idea of masculinity. As Roberto Saviano has discussed in his best-selling book Gomorrah, the image of the Camorra boss as a Hollywood star who controls vast amount of wealth, decides on the life and death of people, lives in houses built to resemble that of Al Pacino-Tony Montana in Scarface and has responsibility for the promotion of the welfare of their kin is part of a social imaginary of a (dis)enchanted youth which sees in the Camorra a means of social advancement and recognition (Saviano 2007). This imaginary is constantly and systematically reproduced through music, social narratives and daily encounters with a deeply deprived social landscape in which affiliation to a Camorra clan seems the only means of social emancipation.

The Camorra has constructed this power through a set of disciplinary and regulatory mechanisms aimed at the construction of docile bodies – mechanisms which have “an immediate hold upon” the body, which “invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs” (Foucault 1995, 25). It would be impossible in the limited space available to provide an exhaustive account of these practices. We therefore have confined ourselves to examine four examples. Drawing on the groundbreaking work of Saviano (2007, 2009a, 2009b) as well as on other sources, we shall first examine how the Camorra contributes to regulating how young boys understand their life options and, indeed, participate in delineating the contours of their future. We shall then discuss how practices of the Camorra mark gender relations and girls' and women's understandings of womanhood, motherhood and the “good life”. Third, through an examination of popular music and the local press, we will see how some elements of the media sustain and reinforce the Camorra's understandings of what is legitimate and illegitimate behaviour and more precisely what is legitimate and illegitimate violence. Finally, an examination of the Camorra's role in sponsoring religious ceremonies brings to the fore how moments of unity – in which communities reinstate core values and beliefs – also come under the tutelage of organised crime. Through these four examples, what emerges is an understanding of organised crime as a key political actor that “governs” the life within its territory through the production of specific subjectivities and a careful delimitation of the range of possible practices.

“No hope of bettering your situation”: boys and the Camorra

With one of the highest rates of unemployment and underemployment in Italy, the Campania region, of which Naples is the capital, offers little to young men and women. According to the Italian statistics bureau ISTAT (2012), more than 60% of 18–29-year-olds are inactive, either seeking work or having given up any kind of formal job-seeking. In the words of Saviano (2007, 109), in some of the most depressed areas of the region, young boys have the choice between working as an errand boy, as a waiter or in construction with “no contract, no sick days or vacation, ten-hour shifts”, or becoming a “System boy” and working for the Camorra, which “at least grants the illusion that commitment will be recognised, that it's possible to make a career”.

But the Camorra not only regulates the career choices of the young men in neighbourhoods across Naples and beyond, it also regulates their understanding of life and death. In a powerful passage of Gomorrah, Saviano (2007, 105) recounts how the Camorra trains boys as young as 12 “to die, or rather to almost die”. To ensure that the youths are not scared of weapons, they are brought to the countryside and repeatedly shot at while wearing bulletproof vests. One boy tells him:

When you're hit, you fall to the ground, you can't breathe, you gasp for air, but you can't inhale. You just can't do it. It's like you've been punched in the chest, you feel like you're dying … but then you get back up. That's the important thing. After you've been hit, you get back up. (Saviano 2007, 104)

These youths come to understand a gunshot – an act of extreme violence that most young boys in Italy only see in computer games or on television – as something you “come back from”. This allows them to shoot and risk being shot as if it were a reversible act both for the victim – he gets up again – and for the shooter – who can walk away as if his act has no consequences. Such training arguably not only prepares the youths to not run when they hear gunshots, but also places shooting another person within the realm of the ordinary, the realm of legitimate actions.

This does not, however, turn the young men into naïve puppets unaware of the potential dangers of gun violence. Indeed, this physical knowledge of gunfire comes with a cognitive knowledge of the effects of gunfire, of the times when a gunshot is not reversible. Saviano (2007, 100) in fact tells of his surprise when he discovers the extent to which young boys “understood the dynamics of pain”. They describe to him in detail what happens to people depending on where they are shot. The chest is particularly painful as to die “your lungs have to fill with blood, and the bullet is like a fiery needle that pierces and twists inside you” (Saviano 2007, 100). A young boy known by his nickname Pikachu knows how he wants to die: “In the head, bang bang and it's all over”. Most of all, “the head's better, because you won't piss yourself or shit in your pants. No flailing around on the ground for half an hour”, Pikachu insists (Saviano 2007, 101). Thus, the Camorra frames not only how these young men live, but also their choices in death: the choice between dying in a pool of their own excrement or dying with their face blown off by a bullet. This produces a specific subjectivity in which dying “like a man” appears to be more important than staying alive, in which a particular view of masculinity moulds their life choice as one between an honest but ignominious life and an honourable criminal one.

Mourning, femininity and the Camorra

If the bruises brought on by the hail of gunfire of the Camorra training inspire respect and power in young boys – inextricably locking masculinity in with violence and pain – organised crime also regulates local understandings of femininity and gender roles. As Claire Longrigg (1997, x) argues, the “mafia is a great creator of myths”, and one of these myths is that of the camorrista's mother/wife/girlfriend/mistress who stands by her man, women who are rarely targeted by the mafia, ³ but are condemned to be wailers, mourning their sons/husbands/lovers by beating their chests at funerals and “making high-pitched shrieks” (Saviano 2007, 153): “The traditional view of the mafia wife is of sacrifice, loyalty and silence: standing by her man through the tough times and raising the children to be perfect gangsters” (Longrigg 1997, xvi). Such an understanding of women linked to the organisation as passive nurturers with no role in the actual criminal activities was so widespread that it was not until the mid-1990s that women started being investigated and charged with organised crime-related activities. Indeed, until 1990, just one woman had been indicted for mafia association in Italy (Longrigg 1997, xiii).

However, the Camorra does more than regulate the behaviour of women linked to the organisation. Indeed, Saviano points at the first time girls find themselves mourning one of their own as a key rite of passage in the lives of young women still unconnected to organised crime. At the funeral of Annalisa Durante, a 14-year-old innocent bystander killed in a crossfire by camorristi, Saviano (2007, 153) explains how the event is an “initiation, on a par with beginning to menstruate or your first sexual encounter” for Annalisa's friends, cousins and neighbours, who “imitate their mothers' gestures” and are, through the event, allowed to “take active part in the life of the neighborhood”. With the news cameras on them, they finally become recognised agents in their own communities.

The choices that young women are faced with are framed in a strikingly similar way to that of their male counterparts. These young women may work “in an underground purse factory, ten hours a day for 500 euros a month”, or choose between falling in love “with some handsome, rich prince” making “a career in the System” or with “some good old boy” who breaks “his back all day long for peanuts” (Saviano 2007, 155). For many, their choice is restricted to whom they choose to marry. Indeed, the Camorra's understanding of women as valued depending upon their connection to men goes beyond the organisation. In an analysis of the local media carried out for a prime-time Italian television programme, Saviano (2009b) shows how this understanding of women's social value permeates society in the Neapolitan areas. One example he gives is of a headline of the Corriere di Caserta (a local daily newspaper) reading: “Rapist of married woman jailed”. He asks why the newspaper feels the need to stress that the rape victim was married. The reason, he argues, is that for the newspaper

it is a crime because she was married. If she hadn't been married, it could have all in all been understood as a forceful way of conquering a woman … But here, someone is underlining that the woman who was raped was a married woman … A married woman means another man's woman and this is why it is important to highlight this. (Saviano 2009b, authors' translation)

Thus, from coming of age, to their choice of husband, to the value accorded to violence against women, the Camorra participates in the rule-setting for women through entire neighbourhoods of the Neapolitan area and beyond.

Spreading the right values: the Camorra, popular music and the press

One means for the Camorra's values to spread beyond the immediate crime-linked families and particularly with youths is through the fashionable “neomelodici” singers, many of them indeed linked to organised crime (Gargiulo 2010; Pine 2008). Aside from having their recordings and music videos bankrolled by the Camorra and performing at Camorra weddings, these singers use their songs to praise those who “don't give up” and condemn those – the turncoats – who have lost l'omertà (the rule of honour of the mafia, which encompasses a “code of silence” and non-collaboration with authorities) and have “brought down an empire” (Marciano and Anthony 2010). Tommy Riccio in the video for his song “Nu Latitante” (A Fugitive), versions of which as of November 2012 had received more than two million hits on YouTube (see Celeste 2007), extols the great love between a camorrista fugitive and his wife, who is shown consoling her children and crying on the phone with her distraught husband (see Riccio 2010). Suddenly, the music stops in the video to show the wife telling her children the story of the “return of a prince” and when her daughter asks, “When is daddy coming back?”, she answers: “He's out working. He'll come back soon”. The next scene shows the fugitive in a hideout getting a wad of money from another man – an apparent reference to the monthly income the Camorra provides to those who are arrested or forced into hiding (Varese 2009). The video ends with him driving his powerful white motorbike away from police – a modern-day Neapolitan prince on his horse, bearing bravely “his cruel destiny” (Gargiulo 2010, authors' translation). The song never engages with why the prince is a fugitive.

The music, as Gius Gargiulo (2010, authors' translation) argues, carries within it the “noble feelings of the disinherited and the violence of passion” – all themes that are likely to be particularly attractive to adolescent boys and girls. The videos are often filmed amateurishly in the streets of Naples and its surroundings – the lack of gloss giving them an “authentic” feel. As stated at the end of a home video bearing the tune of a love song penned by local boss Luigi Giuliano, it is a “tribute to the richness of a Tradition [sic] that survives only thanks to the many who still, for better for worse, live in those streets” (Ricci 2009, authors' translation). Thus, this “Neapolitan kitsch” sustains the “values and practices of an antiquated and at times barbaric social environment,” a social environment which is “not pure … but has nevertheless been able to maintain an existential coherence in the face of change” (Gargiulo 2010, authors' translation). The Camorra puts itself forward as the prime guardian of this troubled but cherished environment, and the neomelodica music sustains this position by “aestheticizing the need to engage the camorra” (Pine 2008, 223).

Spreading the Camorra's world view is also the local press. In a powerful analysis made for national Italian television RAI 3, Saviano (2009b) examines how newspaper headlines reveal the widespread acceptance of norms and values spearheaded by criminal gangs. A basic example he puts forward is the local press's use of Camorra nicknames in headlines and newspaper articles reporting on arrests or court proceedings. The nickname, Saviano argues, not only serves to identify the person whose formal name most people do not know, but serves to differentiate organised crime members from “ordinary” people: “A nickname is like the stigmata of a saint, the mantel of the superhero: It is what makes you different from the others” (Saviano 2009b, authors' translation). By adopting such nicknames, the local press in Campania perpetuates this distinction that legitimises and sustains those linked to organised crime as members of a higher order.

The press also takes on the Camorra's terms for turncoats, regularly referring to them as “l'infame”, meaning the infamous or the dishonourable. “This is the grammar: Those who talk are infamous,” analyses Saviano (2009b, authors' translation). Indeed, when a trade unionist was killed by the Camorra, the Corriere di Caserta daily headlined that he had been “justiced”, implying that the Camorra is a “power that can render justice” and that killing him was “just” because he had wronged (Saviano 2009b, authors' translation). What this headline reveals is that for locals, the Camorra is a form of authority that, concurrently with the Italian state and often more than the Italian state, can claim the legitimate use of violence. It is important to note that this has not been imposed through a change of traditional sovereign power – Italian law still formally rules – but through the internalisation of the Camorra's code of conduct in communities in Naples and surrounding areas.

The gender roles examined earlier are also perpetuated in the newspapers. Bosses are glorified as “playboys” or sciupafemmine, which translates as “womanizer” but literally means “he who ruins women”. A major Italian news magazine Panorama tells of how the boss Luigi Vollaro, known as “The Caliph” in reference to Ottoman sultans, had a “villa-harem”, where he took part in his “frenetic activity as sciupafemmine” (De Stefano 2011). Thus, in the “imaginary of certain girls, the boss is a pop star” (Lagioia n.d., authors' translation). Meanwhile, women linked to organised crime are generally sexualised: a key “godmother” of the Camorra was nicknamed “Pupetta” or “pretty little doll” and continues to be remembered as a “wild beauty, typically southern, dark eyes, hair and skin” (Il Fatto Quotidiano 2011, authors' translation). When she gave an unprecedented press conference in 1982 threatening to kill the leader of a rival gang, much of the press reported as much on her low-cut blouse as they did on her deadly words (Longrigg 1997, 8).

Thus, through popular music and the press – along with other media such as local television and radio stations – the Camorra succeeds in establishing and sustaining its disciplinary and regulatory control beyond the direct members of the organisation. It regulates what men and women can aspire to, the biopolitical realm of the possible in terms of their life choices, what is understood as power, what are the appropriate forms of masculinity and femininity, and how it – rather than the state – judges the rights and wrongs and holds sinners accountable.

With God on our side

The Camorra does not limit itself to the temporal world either, and links between the Camorra and elements of Italy's powerful Catholic Church have long been lamented, even by clergymen (Il Fatto Quotidiano 2012a). In the town of Castellammare di Stabia, south of Naples, the yearly procession celebrating its patron Saint Catello took to stopping under the balcony of a local crime boss, Renato Raffone. In January 2012, the town's mayor Luigi Bobbio had tried to ensure that those carrying the statue would not pay “homage” to the criminal, but once again the statue of the saint stood still under his balcony as Raffone blew a kiss. They told the mayor that they “hadn't been paid” to make the stop but that it came “from their heart” (Castellammare di Stabia Press Office 2011, authors' translation). In protest, the mayor took off his sash and left the ceremony. Rather than being applauded by his fellow townsmen, he was booed and told to “be ashamed” of himself (Il Fatto Quotidiano 2012b, authors' translation).

Bobbio, a former prosecutor who when elected promised a “return to legality and to a livable life”, had argued with the bishop that such gestures “strengthened the role” of the local boss and was widely understood as a Church endorsement by the town's inhabitants. “The Camorra lives off such symbols”, he argued (Castellammare di Stabia Press Office 2011, authors' translation). But aside from highlighting collusion between organised crime and clergy in the south of Italy – collusion that often brings priests to publicly thank crime bosses for sponsoring religious festivities (Il Fatto Quotidiano 2012a) – the incident shows how even without collusion from the clergy, the local people see the Camorra as an essential part of their rituals. Indeed, the Camorra can be seen as a key part of their “affective community” that is “experienced as a blend of fear, recognition and tolerance through the phenomenon of contact, complicity and conspiracy” (Pine 2008, 201). Those carrying the statue stopped under the boss's house also because it was for them part of the ritual in a striking example of how “part of this religiosity is not linked to the spirit of the Church, to the spirit of Christ” (Sales in Il Fatto Quotidiano 2012a, authors' translation), but is rather linked to the social, spiritual, possibly superstitious and ultimately biopolitical logics in which respect must be paid to the local crime boss.

Thus, aside from any actual direct collusion between politicians, crime-fighters, clergymen and cultural icons on the one side, and organised crime on the other, the Camorra has succeeded in establishing and sustaining what was previously referred to as an “extra-legal form of governance” (Varese 2009, 265). They establish norms and rules, judge the “deviants” and determine what is legitimate and what is illegitimate behaviour and violence. They participate in establishing the parameters of masculinity and femininity. They set the rules for social advancement and offer the seemingly only promise for the young men and women of this disinherited land to fulfil their need for “freedom (or illusion of freedom) to get beyond” themselves (Sacks 2012, 40). They provide an answer to what neurologist Oliver Sacks (2012, 40) identifies as humans' need for “meaning, understanding, and explanation.” Through these snapshots of social practices of the Neapolitan Camorra, our aim was to show how organised crime uses violence politically in the biopolitical sense of the term and can at times be a central political actor producing norms, practices, values, codes of behaviour and, ultimately, subjectivities.

Implications for research and practice

These explorations into life in the land of the Camorra bring us back to Europol's definition of organised crime as “having as its central goal, the pursuit of profit and/or power”. The Camorra appears to be pursuing both profit and power. It thus uses violence towards the political goal of achieving power. Of course, the Camorra does not aim to replace or overthrow the government, and when camorristi engage directly with the political spheres – by bankrolling certain candidates and corrupting public officials and law enforcement agents – they appear to be doing so primarily to facilitate and sustain their for-profit criminal activities. Our contention in this article is that it is not this collusion that makes them political actors, but rather their violent and non-violent practices which, to return to Foucault's previous quote, regulate and discipline humans “in their relations, their links, their imbrication with those things that are wealth, resources, means of subsistence, the territory with its specific qualities” and, most of all, “customs, habits, ways of acting and thinking” (Foucault 2000, 208–209). The Camorra, we argued, is a political actor in the biopolitical understanding of the term put forward by Foucault: it uses its violence to create “docile bodies”, able and willing to sustain its system and reproduce its order.

This analysis calls into question the dichotomy put forward by terrorism scholars that establishes a sharp distinction between terrorism and organised crime based on their respective political and lucrative goals. In particular, it highlights how terrorism scholars – both from mainstream and critical branches – have so far conceptualised terrorism only as a challenge to a statist, vertical and monopolistic line of authority in order to establish an explicit vision of order and society, rather than as part of a broader framework of authority which encompasses disciplinary and regulatory mechanisms in which extra-legal forms of governance/governmentality can articulate distinctive, albeit not openly formulated, political images of society. Indeed, terrorism scholars have tended to confine their understanding of terrorism practices to the explicit attempt to undermine – or, in the case of state terrorism, to sustain – the current government or a system of government. Following this understanding, organised criminal organisations are indeed not political. If, however, the meaning of politics is broadened to include not only the pursuit of the common good (be it that envisioned by the state or by terrorist organisations), but also the biopolitical management of populations, as in the case of the Neapolitan Camorra examined here, organised crime can be profoundly political and can indeed regulate life in ways that formal political institutions are incapable of. The distinction between the two forms of violence – terrorism and organised crime – thus needs to be re-examined.

This analysis raises questions on how the “politics” of terrorism should be understood. Indeed, are groups engaging in terrorism only political in the traditional sense (challenge to the government), or do they also participate in practices of governance/governmentality which, in opposition and/or conjunction with those of the state, produce subjectivities and delineate the realm of social and political possibilities for the population? In other words, do groups using terrorist violence also engage in biopolitical regulatory practices? Some interesting work has of course been done investigating the biopolitical nature of the war on terror (see Jackson 2005; Closs Stephens and Vaughan-Williams 2009 among others) and in human geography and gender studies on the social practices of non-state armed groups (see, for example, Feldman 1991). However, a thorough investigation of the biopolitics of non-state armed actors has yet to be undertaken. Such an examination would not only shed light on whether and how non-state armed actors produce specific subjectivities and discipline acting and thinking, but would also allow for an investigation into the links between the two forms of politics (the “traditional” and the “biopolitical”) among non-state actors. This exploration also has important policy implications. How should the biopolitical practices of non-state armed groups be engaged with? What kind of programmes are needed to challenge these often violent disciplinary practices? What happens to such practices once groups transform their traditional political goals and/or enter into formal governance? By investigating the biopolitics of non-state armed groups, scholars and practitioners may indeed be able to open new paths for the transformation of conflicts marked by terrorist violence.

For example, one area in which examining the biopolitics of political violence may offer a new lens for scholars and policy-makers is that of the disciplinary practices of paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. Indeed, many are grappling with the recent renewal of violence in Derry/Londonderry by a group named Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD). Established in 2008, RAAD is primarily composed of former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers. It is not opposed to the peace process and has kept its distance from republican dissident groups (Spotlight 2012). Indeed, its sole stated aim is to punish drug dealers in republican neighbourhoods and use shootings (primarily in the knees, ankles and elbows) and beatings to deter youths from getting involved with drugs. Stepping up its violence, RAAD claimed responsibility for its first murder in February 2012, shooting dead 24-year-old Andrew Allen (Spotlight 2012). Later in the year, it began to force parents to bring their children to be shot or face the threat of graver wounds caused by higher-calibre weapons (Newsnight 2012; Spotlight 2012).

Asked by a journalist in a written message why they shot alleged drug dealers, RAAD members answered that “Republicans have a history of defending their communities against drug dealers” (Spotlight 2012). Indeed, Rachel Monaghan (2002) traces informal justice mechanisms in Ireland back to the sixteenth century – justice systems that were used as alternative mechanisms to the British rule after colonisation and became associated with the nationalist movement by the nineteenth century. The Provisional IRA took on policing roles soon after the start of the Troubles, even launching purges that targeted “alleged criminals, minor drug abusers, teenage girls suspected of fraternising with British soldiers, and anyone believed to be connected to, or having sympathy with, the State” (Monaghan 2002, 44). According to Monaghan (2002, 44), this shows that the IRA targeted both “political” and “normal” crime. Although petty crime tended to be handled non-violently through a restorative approach, special IRA units also punished alleged offenders primarily through “kneecapping”.

In her analysis of the informal justice system and punishments set up by the IRA, Monaghan (2002, 52–53) points at the “policing vacuum” left by the fact that the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and to a large extent its successor, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), have little legitimacy in the nationalist communities. This is certainly an important element. One would assume however that with the full integration of Sinn Fein in the political institutions of Northern Ireland (as the second largest party holding the office of Deputy First Minister since 2007) and its public endorsement of the PSNI, groups such as RAAD would be less and less relevant. On the contrary, however, RAAD appears to have become more and more present and increased both the frequency and brutality of its attacks.

RAAD, as noted in its message above, sees itself as continuing a long-standing republican practice of defending the community (in this specific case, against drugs). Indeed, the practice of demanding that alleged culprits offer themselves up for punishment is one that was commonly used by the IRA during the Troubles (Monaghan 2002, 46). RAAD has also given lighter punishments to children of former IRA volunteers, another common practice of the IRA (BBC 2012; Spotlight 2012). One can thus trace a continuity of punishment practices between the IRA and RAAD, and, indeed, continuity in disciplining the republican/nationalist/Catholic areas of Northern Ireland. Drawing on the analysis put forward in this article, such violence can be understood as biopolitical violence that arguably has long been part of republican governance.

From this perspective, it is possible to question whether despite the Sinn Fein/IRA's acceptance of power-sharing in the traditional formal realm of politics, republicans may yet be unprepared to share in the disciplining and regulation of life in their areas. Interestingly, punishment violence has repeatedly peaked in times of ceasefire. Indeed, during the Troubles, the peak of punishments meted out by the IRA can be found in 1975 – a year of ceasefire for the organisation (Silke 1999) – while punishment beatings increased by 400% when the IRA declared a ceasefire in 1994 (Monaghan 2002, 48). RAAD was established merely a year after Sinn Fein publicly accepted formal policing and could be read as a refusal by some republican activists/paramilitaries to accept external regulation. It is important to stress that RAAD clearly stated that it had “no political agenda” (Spotlight 2012) and did not position itself against the formal peace process – they are not dissident republicans. ⁴ But they have been engaged in what the media has dubbed a “battle for the very soul of the community within republicanism” (Spotlight 2012). Thus, understanding RAAD's violence as the biopolitical aspect of republican political violence arguably helps to frame this battle within the broader political context of traditional and biopolitical governance.

This example points to the possibility that broadening our understanding of the political in political violence may offer more than a questioning of the terrorism/organised crime dichotomy as advanced through our exploration of the case of the Camorra. It may indeed offer a lens through which to understand how the violence of both state and non-state armed actors is often not only directed at specific, explicit “political” goals, but is also aimed at disciplining and regulating life in biopolitical terms. If such an analysis, spurred by Foucault's seminal writings, has been carried out with regards to the state and its power and violence, it has largely neglected non-state actors.

This article is an attempt to steer the discussion on terrorism towards a more sophisticated understanding of the biopolitics of violence of non-state actors. As illustrated by the case of RAAD examined above, non-state actors often engage in disciplining violence and can be seen to use violence politically both in the traditional and in the biopolitical sense. Understanding the biopolitical functions of non-state violence and how it links with the traditional political functions may help us understand the continued violence of such groups post-ceasefire and crucially may offer a framework to engage with the violence. Such an analysis and engagement could offer interesting avenues in cases such as the African National Congress in South Africa, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC), the Kurdistan Worker's Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, PKK) in Turkey and many others. Indeed, just as the violence of RAAD is not apolitical but rather the continuation of the IRA's political project of establishing and sustaining a “clean” social environment in Northern Ireland's Catholic working-class areas, the biopolitical violence of non-state armed groups needs to be understood as a facet of their political violence which requires a political understanding and response. Such a broadened understanding and engagement with political violence would arguably offer a deeper understanding of the practices of violence and could potentially open up so far unexplored avenues to practitioners working to transform political violence.

Notes

1. However, challenging this position, it could be argued that the definitional debate is actually a sign of critical health in both fields.

2. Jackson, et al. (2011, 116) understand political motives as including “publicizing a cause or grievance; intimidating a population to enforce compliance; forcing a change in government policy; instigating popular revolution or social disorder; providing an additional strategy to revolutionary and guerrilla struggle; eliminating rivals or opponents; or illustrating the weakness of the state as a keeper of law and order, among many others”. Distinguishing themselves from many mainstream authors, they focus on state as well as non-state actors that use terrorist violence.

3. In this article we distinguish between Mafia (with capital “m”) and mafia. While the former refers specifically to the Sicilian Mafia, the latter indicates organised crime more broadly, with a reference to features which may be common to the Sicilian Mafia, the Neapolitan Camorra and the Calabrian N'drangheta.

4. There has been some concern that an overlap of interests between RAAD and dissident republican groups such as the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA may lead to cooperation between the groups but there is yet to be any evidence of such cooperation (Spotlight 2012; Newsnight 2012).