Few modern social phenomena have been more misinterpreted and misunderstood than the Mafia, 'ndrangheta and Camorra, the three names designating organized criminal activity in Sicily, Calabria and Naples respectively. In some sense it is no surprise that there should be misunderstandings. Numerous hindrances lie in wait for the would-be Mafia observer. Most important of these may be the secrecy in which the Mafia shrouds itself, a secrecy assured by the vow of silence known as omertA , which surrounds all those who, however unwillingly, come into contact with it.

An example: at 2am, July 10, 1988, three associates of the Camorra boss Antonio Bardellino were gunned down on the streets of his hometown of Aversa, just outside Naples, by members of a rival clan. The gunfight lasted thirty minutes. A few minutes after the last shots were fired, the police arrived. While they removed one of the corpses from the street, a man in a nearby apartment opened his window to ask in a derisory tone - "Anything happen down there?" As Leonardo Sciascia shows in his penetrating portrait of the Mafia world cited above, one knows better than to witness a Mafia crime.

Another, less dramatic, hindrance to making sense of the Mafia , 'ndrangheta and Camorra is the complexity of these phenomena. They are distinct organizations, based in particular territories, but they also have numerous common characteristics, not to mention continuous dealings with one another. The Mafia and 'ndrangheta especially have similar, interwoven, histories - unless otherwise specified, in this article the term Mafia will be used to indicate them both. The Neapolitan Camorra, for all its similarities, is something of a case unto itself, and will be considered separately.

Until recently organized crime was generally viewed as a southern problem, an issue of "special" interest to those with a criminal curiosity. But with the Mani Pulite investigations in the 1990s it became clear that these organizations are thoroughly enmeshed in the fabric of Italian society as a whole, and that understanding Italy is hardly possible without reference to them. Certainly they are not something that can be eradicated with one trial, defeated in one year or even in ten; indeed to move beyond the Mafia would require the total transformation of Italian society, politics and economic life. Those that ask what shape Italy will have in the 21st century therefore also need to ask what role the Mafia, 'ndrangheta and Camorra will play in it.

Nelson Moe , with contributions by Rob Andrews