This article introduces Bourdieusian criminology to Naples, with the aim of re-examining the local nexus between street culture and urban crime. Drawing on a year-long ethnography conducted between 2016 and 2017, it focuses on the performance of violence and its symbolic value in the Quartieri Spagnoli, a disadvantaged neighbourhood long infiltrated by the Camorra (Naples’ local mafia) that has, in recent years, witnessed a dramatic surge in tourism amid the city's broader transformation. The article argues that, as a result of this transformation, symbolic returns on violence are diminishing, as illustrated by an ethnographic case of failed criminal distinction. Beyond offering an original insight into the workings of street fields ‘from off the map’ of the extant literature, the article also shows how Bourdieusian criminology can serve as a powerful antidote to stubbornly persistent essentialist readings of organised crime in southern Italy.
AllumF (2001) Becoming a Camorrista: criminal culture and life choices in Naples. Journal of Modern Italian Studies6(3): 324–347.
2.
AmatoFRossiU (2003) Un sistema locale marginale tra cambiamento e continuità: i Quartieri Spagnoli di Napoli. In: SommellaRVigagnoniR (eds) SLot quaderno 5: Territori e progetti del Mezzogiorno. Baskerville, pp. 13–45.
3.
AndersonE (1999) Code of the Street. Norton.
4.
AvalleA (2021) The ultimate Ferrante experience: convergence culture, literary tourism, and the quest for authenticity. Italian Culture39(1): 19–32.
5.
BarbagalloF (2010) Storia della camorra. Laterza.
6.
BerrinoA (2011) La storia del turismo in Italia. Nuova Informazione Bibliografica8(3): 539–554.
7.
BighelliC (2020) Mafia-type organized crime in the gentrifying city. In: SemiGLa SpinaAMirabileM, et al. (eds) Gentrification and Crime: New Configurations and Challenges for the City. TU Delft Open, 33–52.
8.
BourdieuP (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press.
9.
BourdieuP (1986) The forms of capital. In: RichardsonJ (ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Greenwood, pp. 241–258.
10.
BourdieuP (1990) In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology. Stanford University Press.
11.
BourdieuP (2000) Pascalian Meditations. Stanford University Press.
12.
BourdieuP (2007) Sketch for a Self-analysis. Polity Press.
13.
BourgoisP (1995) In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge University Press.
14.
BrancaccioL (2009) Guerre di camorra: i clan napoletani tra faide e scissioni. In: GribaudiG (ed.) Traffici criminali: Camorra, mafie e reti internazionali dell’illegalità. Bollati Boringhieri, pp. 65–89.
15.
BrancaccioL (2017) I clan di camorra: genesi e storia. Donzelli.
16.
BurawoyM (2003) Revisits: an outline of a theory of reflexive ethnography. American Sociological Review68(5): 645–679.
17.
CaliaRMMarcellettiV (2022) Il codice giovanile della devianza. Subcultura e immaginario delle baby gangs: tra collasso educativo e disperata ricerca di un’identità. Rivista Italiana di Conflittologia45(1): 76–125.
18.
CatanzaroR (1992) Men of Respect: A Social History of the Sicilian Mafia. Free Press.
19.
CatinoM (2014) How do mafias organize? Conflict and violence in three mafia organizations. European Journal of Sociology55(2): 177–220.
20.
CelataFRomanoA (2022) Overtourism and online short-term rental platforms in Italian cities. Journal of Sustainable Tourism30(5): 1020–1039.
21.
ChancerLS (2024) Cultural criminology: a retrospective and prospective review. Annual Review of Criminology7(1): 129–142.
22.
ChinniciGSantinoU (1989) La violenza programmata: Omicidi e guerre di mafia a Palermo dagli anni ‘60 ad oggi. Franco Angeli.
23.
CollettiA (2016) Il welfare e il suo doppio. Ledizioni.
24.
CremaschiMLietoL (2020) Writing southern theory from the global north. Notes on informality and regulation. Equilibri24(3): 261–280.
25.
De LeoD (2016) Mafie & urbanistica: Azioni e responsabilità dei pianificatori nei territori contesi alle organizzazioni criminali. Franco Angeli.
26.
DIA (2017) Relazione semestrale gennaio – giugno 2017. Ministero dell’Interno.
27.
EspositoA (2023) Tourism-driven displacement in Naples, Italy. Land Use Policy134: 106919.
28.
EspositoEChiodelliF (2020) Juggling the formal and the informal: the regulatory environment of the illegal access to public housing in Naples. Geoforum; Journal of Physical, Human, and Regional Geosciences113(1): 50–59.
29.
FerrellJ (2013) Cultural criminology and the politics of meaning. Critical Criminology21: 257–271.
30.
FraserA (2013) Street habitus: gangs, territorialism, and social change in Glasgow. Journal of Youth Studies16(8): 970–985.
31.
FraserA (2015) Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-Industrial City. Oxford University Press.
32.
FraserAHagedornJM (2018) Gangs and a global sociological imagination. Theoretical Criminology22(1): 42–62.
33.
GibsonM (1998) Biology or environment? Race and southern “deviancy” in the writings of Italian criminologists, 1880–1920. In: SchneiderJ (ed.) Italy’s Southern Question: Orientalism in One Country. Berg, pp. 99–115.
34.
GiustoS (2019) “One of us”: the neomelodic music industry as a Camorra-mediated space of subaltern publicity in contemporary Naples. Global Crime20(2): 134–155.
35.
GlynnR (2019) The Camorra comedy: Naples in the (post-) national cinematic gaze. The Italianist39(2): 191–215.
36.
GribaudiG (2009) Clan Camorristi a Napoli: radicamento locale e traffici internazionali. In: GribaudiG (ed.) Traffici criminali: Camorra, mafie e reti internazionali dell’illegalità. Bollati Boringhieri, pp. 187–240.
37.
GrundetjernHSandbergS (2012) Dealing with a gendered economy: female drug dealers and street capital. European Journal of Criminology9(6): 621–635.
38.
IlanJ (2015) Understanding Street Culture: Poverty, Crime, Youth, and Cool. Macmillan International Higher Education.
39.
IlanJ (2019) Cultural criminology: the time is now. Critical Criminology27: 5–20.
40.
LeottaA (2020) Naples for urban voy(ag)eurs: tourism and the representation of space in Gomorrah and my brilliant friend. Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies8(2): 205–219.
41.
LupoS (2004) Storia della mafia: dalle origini ai giorni nostri. Donzelli.
42.
MarmoM (2011) Il Coltello e il mercato: la camorra prima e dopo l’unità d’Italia. L’ancora del Mediterraneo.
43.
MarrazzoG (1985) Il camorrista: vita segreta di Don Rafele Cutolo. Pironti.
44.
MartinJL (2003) What is field theory?American Journal of Sociology109(1): 1–49.
45.
MartoneV (2014) State, markets, and mafias: political–criminal networks and local governance in the Campania region. The European Review of Organised Crime2(1): 57–78.
46.
MassariM (2019) Mafia violence: strategies, representations, performances. In: MassariMMartoneV (eds) Mafia Violence: Political, Symbolic, and Economic Forms of Violence in Camorra Clans. Routledge, pp. 19–34.
47.
McCarthyBHaganJ (2001) When crime pays: capital, competence, and criminal success. Social Forces79(3): 1035–1060.
48.
PaoliL (2003) Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style. Oxford University Press.
49.
PineJ (2008) Icons and iconoclasm: Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah and La Denuncia. Journal of Modern Italian Studies13(3): 431–436.
50.
PineJ (2012) The Art of Making Do in Naples. University of Minnesota Press.
51.
PrieurA (2018) Towards a criminology of structurally conditioned emotions: combining Bourdieu’s field theory and cultural criminology. European Journal of Criminology15(3): 344–363.
52.
PutnamRD (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton University Press.
53.
SalesI (1988) La camorra, le camorre. Editori Riuniti.
54.
SalesI (2006) Le strade della violenza: malviventi e bande di camorra a Napoli. L’ancora del Mediterraneo.
55.
Sánchez-JankowskiM (1991) Islands in the Street: Gangs and American Urban Society. University of California Press.
56.
SandbergS (2008a) Street capital: ethnicity and violence on the streets of Oslo. Theoretical Criminology12(2): 153–171.
57.
SandbergS (2008b) Black drug dealers in a white welfare state: cannabis dealing and street capital in Norway. The British Journal of Criminology48(5): 604–619.
58.
SandbergSFleetwoodJ (2017) Street talk and Bourdieusian criminology: bringing narrative to field theory. Criminology & Criminal Justice17(4): 365–381.
59.
SandbergSPedersenW (2009) Street Capital: Black Cannabis Dealers in a White Welfare State. Policy Press.
60.
SavianoR (2018) The Piranhas. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
61.
SchneiderJ (1998) Introduction: the dynamics of neo-orientalism in Italy (1848–1995). In: SchneiderJ (ed.) Italy’s Southern Question: Orientalism in One Country. Berg, pp. 1–23.
62.
SchneiderJSchneiderP (2011) The mafia and capitalism: an emerging paradigm. Sociologica5(2): 1–22.
63.
SciarroneR (2019) Forms of capital and mafia violence. In: MassariMMartoneV (eds) Mafia Violence: Political, Symbolic, and Economic Forms of Violence In Camorra Clans. Routledge, 72–89.
64.
ShammasVL (2018) Bourdieu’s five lessons for criminology. Law and Critique29(2): 201–219.
65.
ShammasVLSandbergS (2016) Habitus, capital, and conflict: bringing Bourdieusian field theory to criminology. Criminology & Criminal Justice16(2): 195–213.
66.
SteinmetzG (2014) Pierre Bourdieu, “On the state. Lectures at the Collège de France 1989–1992”. Sociologica8(3): 1–13.
67.
VareseF (2010) What is organized crime? In: VareseF (ed.) Organized Crime: Critical Concepts in Criminology. Routledge, pp. 1–35.
68.
WacquantL (2002) Scrutinizing the street: poverty, morality, and the pitfalls of urban ethnography. American Journal of Sociology107(6): 1468–1532.
69.
WacquantL (2018) Four transversal principles for putting Bourdieu to work. Anthropological Theory18(1): 3–17.
70.
WilsonWJChaddhaA (2009) The role of theory in ethnographic research. Ethnography10(4): 549–564.
