Eric Hobsbawm (2017), Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Abstract

221 Book Reviews while banditry is construed to be a “pre-political phenomenon” endemic in a rural setting, there is a certain parallelism that defines the relations between bandits on the one hand and the local population and the State on the other. For banditry is, according to Hobsbawm, a protest of peasant society against forces that are simultaneously new and beyond their control and comprehension (2017, pp. 31–34). In Chapter iii, Mafias is the generic term for movements that serve as “the meeting place of all sorts of tendencies” and they fail to develop an organisation beyond local milieus (Hobsbawm, 2017, pp. 40–41). However, Hobsbawm sketches a few general characteristics of the Mafia: the code of behaviour or omertà that governs in the absence of public order or authorities, patronage binding the boss and retainers, and a network of local gangs in control of communities (2017, pp. 43–45). For the …