Editing Mafia (section)


The '''Mafia''', also known as the '''Italian Mafia''' or the '''Cosa Nostra''', is an [[organized crime]] syndicate based in Italy that emerged in the mid-19th century in Sicily. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket protection racketeering]. Each group, known as a "family", "clan", or "''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosca cosca]''", claims [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereignty sovereignty] over a territory in which it operates its [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_%28crime%29 rackets] – usually a town or village or a neighbourhood (''borgata'') of a larger city. Its members call themselves "men of honour", although the public often refers to them as "mafiosi".

According to the classic definition, the Mafia is a criminal organization originating in Sicily.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-lupo1_1-0">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Mafia#cite_note-lupo1-1]</sup>However, the term "mafia" has become a generic term for any organized criminal network with similar structure, methods, and interests.

The Mafia proper frequently parallels, collaborates with or clashes with, networks originating in other parts of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Italy southern Italy], such as the [[Camorra]] (from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campania Campania]), the [['Ndrangheta]] (from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calabria Calabria]), the [[Stidda]] (southern Sicily) and the [[Sacra Corona Unita]] (from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apulia Apulia]). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Falcone Giovanni Falcone], the anti-Mafia judge murdered by the Mafia in 1992, however, objected to the conflation of the term "Mafia" with organized crime in general:
While there was a time when people were reluctant to pronounce the word "Mafia" ... nowadays people have gone so far in the opposite direction that it has become an overused term ... I am no longer willing to accept the habit of speaking of the Mafia in descriptive and all-inclusive terms that make it possible to stack up phenomena that are indeed related to the field of organized crime but that have little or nothing in common with the Mafia.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-2">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Mafia#cite_note-2 [2]]</sup>—[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Falcone Giovanni Falcone], 1990The [[American Mafia]] arose from offshoots of the Mafia that emerged in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States United States] during the late nineteenth century, following waves of emigration from Italy. There were similar offshoots in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada Canada] among [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Canadians Italian Canadians]. The same has been claimed of organised crime among [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Australians Italians] in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia Australia].