2 When I am specifically referring to the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, I use Mafia with a capital M.1 For Lo Verso there are only three real mafia associations, Cosa Nostra, the 'Ndrangheta, and the Al (.).It is a “high density” mafia town, and is the birthplace of, amongst others, the American Mafia boss, Joe 'Bananas' of the Bonano family. I particularly focused on Castellammare del Golfo (province of Trapani), which has a beautiful fishing port that is now attracting tourists. In this paper reference is made to the following films: IntroductionĢ As a visual/social anthropologist, I have been researching the subject of Cosa Nostra and the Sicilian social anti-mafia for over twenty-five years, first working with Sicilian criminals (from Western Sicily) in Florence, and then moving to Western Sicily where I continued my work with social anti-mafia activists in the province of Trapani, and sometimes Palermo. This is of particular relevance within this context as non-verbal communication, or rather the use of the body to communicate is an integral part of any Sicilian discourse. Scenes from these films have been inserted within this text, not as illustrations but to add another level of information to the discussion, and to provide a brief experience of some of the situations being mentioned. They may be seen on - a website that is still being constructed at the time of writing. So far there are eight long films and numerous short films, all made by Toni de Bromhead. This is a collection of ethnographic films about the Mafia and the social anti-mafia, shot between 1992 - 2016 in Western Sicily. And also Jane and Peter Schneider who generously gave their time to view the films and give me feed-back.Īll mistakes, however, are entirely mine.ġ The ethnography used in this paper mostly comes from my project BLURRED BOUNDARIES - ordinary citizens fighting the Mafia in Sicily. Particular thanks, also, to Naor Ben-Yehoyada for reading this paper and making a number of useful suggestions. I should especially like to thank members of Addio Pizzo, members of ARCHE, Augusto Cavadi, members of Cambiamenti, members of Castello Libero, Enrico Colojani, Sebastiano Cruciata, Vincenzo Desiderio, Domenico Grassa, Salvatore Ingui, Pino Maniaci, his daughter Latizia Maniaci, who all helped make the project possible. I should like to thank all those who participated in my visual-ethnography project on the social anti-mafia and who, with great generosity and patience, let me film them.

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