Norms and illegality in the social margins

Abstract

The special section in this issue approaches the theme of illegal, semi-legal and extra-legal practices in Italy from a range of critical perspectives informed by ethnography, history and theory. The glimpses of social practice offered by our contributors explore the ambiguities and ironies of presumed distinctions between the lawful and the illicit, or the legitimate and the immoral. Five case studies depict different networks of social actors navigating contingent landscapes of possibility and constraint, sanctions and incentives, imagination and doubt. Seen in empirical terms, ‘from the bottom up’, the neoliberal terrain of normativity is shown to be far more heterogeneous and uncertain than we might have anticipated. Far from reconfirming our stereotypes, Italy offers many challenges to conventional assumptions about law and criminality.

Keywords::

• Ethnography
• legal codes
• criminality
• resistance
• social practice
• Italy

Notes

¹ Sponsored in part by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, through a grant awarded to Dr Cristiana Panella.

² From the preliminary abstract available at http://www.wennergren.org/grantees/panella-cristiana (accessed February 2, 2014).