ABSTRACT
In this chapter the issue of the relations between violence and mafias is dealt with by way of a theoretical hypothesis subjected to an analysis of the phenomenon of the mafia, understood as a multifaceted reality in which criminal, economic, political and cultural factors converge. Thanks to the tools offered by socio-historical analysis, this chapter analyses mafia violence focusing on some emblematic cases that occurred in Sicily over the past seventy years: the manslaughter of Portella della Ginestra, on 1 May 1947, considered as an example of interaction among criminal-mafia violence and institutional complicities; the murder of Giuseppe Impastato, the political activist who, born in a mafia family, was killed by Cosa Nostra in 1977 because of his anti-mafia activities; and, finally, the mafia war that occurred in Sicily during the early 1980s, which involved different families belonging to Cosa Nostra and led to the implementation of major Italian legislation against mafia-type organisations which still represents a model at international level.
