Dual routes from social identity to collective opposition to criminal organisations: Intracultural appropriation theory and the roles of honour codes and social change beliefs
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online May, 2017
Dual routes from social identity to collective opposition to criminal organisations: Intracultural appropriation theory and the roles of honour codes and social change beliefs
Italian criminal organisations (COs) are a serious global threat. Intracultural appropriation theory (ICAT) holds that such groups exploit cultural codes of masculinity and honour to legitimise and lower resistance to their actions. Such codes are an important feature of Southern Italian group membership. A large survey (N = 1,173) investigated the role of two previously underexamined facets of honour cultures—personal concerns for reputation, and female honour ideology. In addition, drawing on social identity theory, and testing a dual-route hypothesis, this research investigated the role of beliefs about the necessity of social change in the articulation between identification, honour, and collective action intentions. Consistent with ICAT, and with previous research, male-honour-related values uniquely predicted collective action intentions against criminal organisations. In addition, consistent with the dual-route hypothesis: (a) regional identification positively predicted social change beliefs which in turn explained stronger intentions to oppose COs collectively, and, (b) regional identification was also positively associated with masculine honour which in turn predicted weaker intentions to oppose COs. The evidence supports the idea that social identity can have opposing effects on collective action in the same context, depending on which beliefs are mobilised.
AbramsD. (1990). Political identity: Relative deprivation, social identity and the case of Scottish nationalism (ESRC 16–19 Initiative Occasional Papers. Paper 24). Retrieved from researchgate.net/directory/publications
2.
AbramsD.GrantP. R. (2012). Testing the social identity relative deprivation (SIRD) model of social change: The political rise of Scottish nationalism. British Journal of Social Psychology, 51, 674–689. doi:10.1111/j.2044–8309.2011.02032.x
3.
AbramsD.RutlandA.FerrellJ.PelletierJ. (2008). Children’s judgments of disloyal and immoral peer behaviour: Subjective group dynamics in minimal intergroup contexts. Child Development, 79, 444–461. doi:10.1111/j.1467–8624.2007.01135.x
4.
AlbaneseG.MarinelliG. (2013). Organized crime and productivity: Evidence from firm-level data. Rivista italiana degli economisti, 18, 367–394. doi:10.1427/74922
5.
BanfieldE. C. (1958). The moral basis of a backward society. New York, NY: Free Press.
6.
BarnesC. D.BrownR. P.LenesJ.BossonJ.CarvalloM. (2014). My country, my self: Honor, identity, and defensive responses to national threats. Self and Identity, 13, 638–662. doi:10.1080/15298868.2014.892529
7.
BarnesC. D.BrownR. P.OstermanL. L. (2012). Don’t tread on me: Masculine honor ideology in the U.S. and militant responses to terrorism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1018–1029. doi:10.1177/0146167212443383
8.
BlokA. (1972). The peasant and the brigand: Social banditry reconsidered. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 14, 494–503. doi:10.1017/S0010417500006824
9.
CayliB. (2013). Italian civil society against the mafia: From perceptions to expectations. International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, 41, 81–99. doi:10.1016/j.ijlcj.2012.11.005
10.
CrossS. E.UskulA. K.Gerçek-SwingB.SunbayZ.AlözkanC.GünsoyC.. . . Karakitapoglu-AygünZ. (2014). Cultural prototypes and dimensions of honor. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40, 232–249. doi:10.1177/0146167213510323
11.
FoschiR.LauriolaM. (2016). Do amoral familism and political distrust really affect North–South differences in Italy?Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 47, 751–764. doi:10.1177/0022022116644986
12.
GrantP. R.AbramsD.RobertsonD. W.GarayJ. (2015). Predicting protests by disadvantaged skilled immigrants: A test of an integrated social identity relative deprivation, collective efficacy (SIRDE) model. Social Justice Research, 28, 76–101. doi:10.1007/s11211–014–0229-z
13.
HayesA. F. (2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
14.
HerzfeldM. (1980). Honour and shame: Problems in the comparative analysis of moral systems. Man, 15, 339–351. doi:10.2307/2801675
15.
JostJ. T.Chaikalis-PetritsisV.AbramsD.SidaniusJ.van der ToornJ.BrattC. (2012). Why men (and women) do and don’t rebel: Effects of system justification on willingness to protest. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 197–208. doi:10.1177/0146167211422544
16.
KayA. C.JostJ. T. (2003). Complementary justice: Effects of “poor but happy” and “poor but honest” stereotype exemplars on system justification and implicit activation of the justice motive. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 823–837. doi:10.1037/0022–3514.85.5.823
17.
KlandermansB. (1984). Mobilization and participation: Social-psychological expansions of resource mobilization theory. American Sociological Review, 49, 583–600. doi:10.2307/2095417
18.
LittleT. D. (2013). Longitudinal structural equation modeling. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
19.
LittleT. D.CunninghamW. A.ShaharG.WidamanK. F. (2002). To parcel or not to parcel: Exploring the question, weighing the merits. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 9, 151–173. doi:10.1207/S15328007SEM0902_1
20.
LivingstoneA.HaslamS. A. (2008). The importance of social identity content in a setting of chronic social conflict: Understanding intergroup relations in Northern Ireland. British Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 1–21. doi:10.1348/014466607X200419
21.
LouisW. R. (2009). Collective action—and then what?Journal of Social Issues, 65, 727–748. doi:10.1111/j.1540–4560.2009.01623.x
22.
PaoliL. (2003). Mafia brotherhoods: Organized crime, Italian style. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
23.
PeristianyJ. G.Pitt-RiversJ. (1992). Introduction. In PeristianyJ. G.Pitt-RiversJ. (Eds.), Honor and grace in anthropology (pp. 1–17). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
24.
PipyrouS. (2014). Altruism and sacrifice: Mafia free gift giving in South Italy. Anthropological Forum, 24, 412–426. doi:10.1080/00664677.2014.948379
25.
Pitt-RiversJ. (1966). Honour and social status. In PeristianyJ. (Ed.), Honour and shame: The values of Mediterranean society (pp. 19–77). London, UK: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
26.
PrattoF.ÇidamA.StewartA. L.ZeineddineF. B.ArandaM.AielloA.. . . HenkelK. E. (2013). Social dominance in context and in individuals: Contextual moderation of robust effects of social dominance orientation in 15 languages and 20 countries. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4, 587–599. doi:10.1177/1948550612473663
27.
PreacherK. J.HayesA. F. (2008). Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 879–891. doi:10.3758/BRM.40.3.879
28.
PutnamR. D. (1994). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
29.
Rodriguez MosqueraP. M. (2016). On the importance of family, morality, masculine, and feminine honor for theory and research. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 10, 431–442. doi:10.1111/spc3.12262Rodriguez
30.
MosqueraP. M.FischerA. H.MansteadA. S. R.ZaalbergR. (2008). Attack, disapproval, or withdrawal? The role of honour in anger and shame responses to being insulted. Cognition and Emotion, 22, 1471–1498. doi:10.1080/02699930701822272
31.
Rodriguez MosqueraP. M.MansteadA. S. R.FischerA. H. (2002). The role of honour concerns in emotional reactions to offences. Cognition and Emotion, 16, 143–163. doi:10.1080/02699930143000167
32.
RosseelY. (2012). lavaan: An R package for structural equation modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48, 1–36. doi:10.18637/jss.v048.i02
33.
SchneiderJ. (Ed.). (1998). Italy’s “southern question.” Orientalism in one country. Oxford, UK: Berg.
34.
SchneiderJ. C.SchneiderP. T. (1994). Mafia, antimafia, and the question of Sicilian culture. Politics & Society, 22, 237–258. doi:10.1177/0032329294022002007
35.
SchneiderJ. C.SchneiderP. T. (2003). Reversible destiny: Mafia, antimafia, and the struggle for Palermo. Berkeley: University of California Press.
36.
SchneiderJ. C.SchneiderP. T. (2005). Mafia, antimafia, and the plural cultures of Sicily. Current Anthropology, 46, 501–520. doi:10.1086/431529
37.
SweetmanJ.LeachC. W.SpearsR.PrattoF.SaabR. (2013). “I have a dream”: A typology of social change goals. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 1, 293–320. doi:10.5964/jspp.v1i1.85
38.
TajfelH. (Ed.). (1978). Differentiation between social groups. London, UK: Academic Press.
39.
TomasiG. (1960). The leopard. New York, NY: Knopf.
40.
TorosH.MavelliL. (2013). Terrorism, organised crime and the biopolitics of violence. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 6, 73–91. doi:10.1080/17539153.2013.765701
41.
TravaglinoG. A.AbramsD.Randsley de MouraG. R. (2014). Men of honor don’t talk: The relationship between masculine honor and social activism against criminal organizations in Italy. Political Psychology. Advance online publication. doi:10.1111/pops.12226
42.
TravaglinoG. A.AbramsD.Randsley de MouraG.RussoG. (2014). Organized crime and group-based ideology: The association between masculine honor and collective opposition against criminal organizations. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 17, 799–812. doi:10.1177/1368430214533394
43.
TravaglinoG. A.AbramsD.Randsley de MouraG.RussoG. (2015). That is how we do it around here: Levels of identification, masculine honor, and social activism against organized crime in the south of Italy. European Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 342–348. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2100
44.
Turner-ZwinkelsF.van ZomerenM.PostmesT. (2015). Politicization during the 2012 U.S. presidential elections: Bridging the personal and the political through an identity content approach. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41, 433–445. doi:10.1177/0146167215569494
45.
Van ZomerenM.LeachC. W.SpearsR. (2012). Protesters as “passionate economists”: A dynamic dual pathway model of approach coping with collective disadvantage. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16, 180–199. doi:10.1177/1088868311430835
46.
Van ZomerenM.PostmesT.SpearsR. (2008). Toward an integrative social identity model of collective action: A quantitative research synthesis of three socio-psychological perspectives. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 504–535. doi:10.1037/0033–2909.134.4.504
47.
Van ZomerenM.PostmesT.SpearsR. (2012). On conviction’s collective consequences: Integrating moral conviction with the social identity model of collective action. British Journal of Social Psychology, 51, 52–71. doi:10.1111/j.2044–8309.2010.02000.x
48.
WolfE. (1982). Europe and the people without history. Berkeley: University of California Press.
49.
WoodJ. L. (2014). Understanding gang membership: The significance of group processes. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 17, 710–729. doi:10.1177/1368430214550344
50.
ZaalM. P.van LaarC.StåhlT.EllemersN.DerksB. (2011). By any means necessary: The effects of regulatory focus and moral conviction on hostile and benevolent forms of collective action. British Journal of Social Psychology, 50, 670–689. doi:10.1111/j.2044–8309.2011.02069.x
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
