Codes of the Underworld : How Criminals Communicate

Winner of the 2010 Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Culture, Media Ecology Association One of New Scientist blog's Best Books for 2009 Winner of the 2009 PROSE Award in Sociology and Social Work, Association of American Publishers "Criminals can't advertise their products on QVC, yet the mafia and the yakuza have prospered longer than most Fortune 500 companies. In Codes of the Underworld, sociologist Diego Gambetta examines how criminals communicate without being caught, how they build trust in a world where everyone is crooked... odes of the Underworld is colourful and engrossing: it could appeal to policymakers, academics, laymen or, God forbid, criminals looking to improve their game."--Spectator "[A]n absolutely fascinating look at the unique problems criminals face when trying to communicate with one another... Fans of crime fiction will love this."--Graham Lawton, NewScientist.com's CultureLab blog "'A wiseguy sees things if there are wiseguy things to see,' wrote Joe Pistone, the FBI agent better known as Donnie Brasco--the name under which he managed to infiltrate the mob. But what are the wiseguy things to see? And how is a wiseguy to know he isn't dealing with the likes of Joe Pistone? Such questions are among those that fascinate Diego Gambetta. Professor Gambetta, an Italian sociologist based at Oxford University, has managed to wrap himself in the language of economics as capably as Pistone wrapped himself in the language of organised crime. Gambetta is an authority on the Sicilian mafia, but deploys the tools of an economist to understand them and other criminals."--Tim Harford, Financial Times "Criminals are in constant fear of being duped, says Diego Gambetta, even as they are busy duping others. Yet hoodlums often seek a literal partner in crime. This, he notes, creates a need for both identification and verification of trust in what is generally an untrustworthy milieu. Lacking a miscreants' yellow page, the question becomes, well, how to find an honest crook? Such concerns pervade Codes of the Underworld, a new book by Gambetta, a professor of sociology at the University of Oxford."--Nina Ayoub, Chronicle of Higher Education "[T]he best applied book on signaling theory to date."--Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution "In Codes of the Underworld, the Oxford sociologist Diego Gambetta uses colorful stories and a minimum of jargon in his quest to analyze how people advertise when their business happens to be illegal... Gambettta sets out to illuminate the world inhabited by these face-tattooed, duel-scarred, razor-brandishing inmates. The result is a book that explains the hidden logic of their behavior in language intelligible to those of us who make it a point to seer clear of both well-armed dictators and well-decorated Mafiosi."--Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason "[A]n absolutely fascinating look at the unique problems criminals face when trying to communicate with one another--how, for example, do you advertise for a partner in crime, or win trust in an inherently untrustworthy world?--and the ingenious ways they solve them... Fans of crime fiction will love this."--Graham Lawton, NewScientist.com's CultureLab blog "[I]lluminating."--The Age