Codes of Conduct as cultural mechanisms of reproduction: Symbols, rituals, and behavioral models in the criminal traditions of Southern Italy
Abstract
This article examines codes of conduct as cultural mechanisms through which behavioral models are transmitted, stabilized, and reproduced within the criminal traditions of Southern Italy. The main emphasis is placed not on the legal status of such codes, but on their cultural content: symbolic meanings, rituals, collective representations, mechanisms of boundary-making between insiders and outsiders, forms of cultural memory, and the transmission of socially significant behavioral patterns. The principal source of analysis is Oleg Maltsev and Vitaliy Lunev’s monograph Philosophy of Southern Italy (2020), in which the Mafia, Camorra, and ’Ndrangheta are approached as culturally organized traditions possessing their own rules, hierarchies, rituals, symbols, forms of knowledge transmission, and conceptions of appropriate behavior.
The theoretical framework combines Clifford Geertz’s interpretive anthropology, Victor Turner’s theory of ritual process, Jan Assmann’s concept of cultural memory, Mary Douglas’s analysis of symbolic boundaries and classification, Fredrik Barth’s approach to group-boundary maintenance, Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice, and anthropological studies of Sicily by Anton Blok, Jane and Peter Schneider, and Theodoros Rakopoulos. Sociological theories are used as a secondary analytical layer, particularly where organizational structure, hierarchy, reputation, and social control are concerned.
The article argues that the cultural durability of a code of conduct depends less on the mere existence of written rules than on their incorporation into a wider system of meanings and practices. Omertà is interpreted not simply as a prohibition against disclosure but as a culturally embedded model governing the relationship between speech and silence. Initiation ritual is understood as a symbolic transition between social statuses and as a means of formalizing belonging. The family environment of the ’Ndrangheta is examined as a primary space for the transmission of cultural models, while written codes are analyzed as one of the mechanisms through which collective memory is preserved and reproduced. The article concludes that a code of conduct should be understood not merely as a set of requirements, but as a cultural matrix through which a group transmits notions of belonging, authority, honor, obligation, secrecy, and acceptable behavior.
Keywords: cultural code, cultural memory, ritual, symbol, omertà, cultural identity, ’Ndrangheta, Mafia, cultural reproduction, tradition, social boundaries.
1. Introduction
A code of conduct may be understood not only as a system of rules regulating the actions of members of a particular group, but also as a form of cultural organization of experience. Through such codes, a community transmits ideas about what is considered honorable or dishonorable, who is recognized as an insider, what loyalty means, how authority, secrecy, family, obligation, and the limits of permissible behavior should be understood. For this reason, codes of conduct are relevant not only to organizational sociology or criminology, but also to cultural studies and social anthropology.
A cultural approach shifts attention away from the efficiency of a rule as an instrument of coercion and toward the system of meanings within which the rule becomes understandable and reproducible. The same action may carry radically different meanings in different cultural environments. Providing information to state authorities, for example, may be interpreted in one cultural system as a civic duty and in another as a violation of loyalty or an act of betrayal. Cultural norms therefore operate not only through prohibition, but through interpretation.
The criminal traditions of Southern Italy provide particularly revealing material for such an analysis. Studies of the Sicilian Mafia, the ’Ndrangheta, and other closed groups demonstrate that their persistence cannot be explained solely by economic or organizational factors. Their continuity is also related to cultural models involving rituals of belonging, symbols, ideas of honor and loyalty, family memory, secrecy, and forms of knowledge transmission (Blok, 1974; Schneider & Schneider, 1976; Paoli, 2003).
In Philosophy of Southern Italy, Maltsev and Lunev likewise examine the Mafia, Camorra, and ’Ndrangheta not merely as criminal structures, but as traditions possessing their own cultural elements. These include behavioral rules, symbols, rituals, hierarchy, modes of transmitting knowledge, and ideas concerning fate, language, and collective memory (Maltsev & Lunev, 2020). Of particular relevance is their claim that organizations contain explicit and implicit rules of interaction that are linked to their internal structure and mode of reproduction (Maltsev & Lunev, 2020, p. 306).
The purpose of this article is to investigate codes of conduct as cultural mechanisms through which groups preserve and transmit behavioral models, collective representations, and symbolic boundaries. The main research question is: How do cultural meanings, symbols, rituals, and forms of memory transform individual rules into durable traditions of behavior?
2. The Code of Conduct as Part of a Cultural System
If a code is interpreted exclusively as a set of prescriptions, much of its cultural meaning remains invisible. A rule does not exist in isolation; it acquires significance within a particular system of values, symbols, narratives, and representations.
Clifford Geertz’s interpretive anthropology is particularly useful in this regard. Geertz conceptualized culture as a system of meanings expressed through symbolic forms by means of which people interpret both the world and their own actions (Geertz, 1973). From this perspective, cultural analysis must ask not only what people do, but also what a particular action means within a specific community.
Silence, for example, is in itself only the absence of speech. Within a particular cultural tradition, however, it may signify loyalty, dignity, caution, protection of the family, or confirmation of belonging. Similarly, obedience to an instruction may be understood as submission, professional duty, respect for a senior figure, or proof of loyalty, depending on the cultural context in which the act is interpreted.
Maltsev and Lunev distinguish between the broader subcultural environment and concrete organizational rules, but from a cultural perspective these two levels remain closely connected. A rule becomes durable precisely because it is supported by a wider cultural system of legends, images, rituals, family narratives, authoritative figures, and symbolic models of behavior (Maltsev & Lunev, 2020).
A code may therefore be understood as a mechanism that translates cultural representations into practice. The idea of loyalty becomes a requirement to behave in a particular way; honor becomes a model for responding to an offense; family belonging becomes a system of obligations; and secrecy becomes a culturally established relationship to information.
3. Cultural Codes and the Collective Interpretation of Behavior
Culture does not merely provide behavioral models; it also supplies the language through which a group evaluates action. Individuals act within pre-existing categories such as “honor,” “shame,” “duty,” “betrayal,” “insider,” “outsider,” “elder,” “family,” and “respect.” These categories are not neutral descriptions. They are culturally charged forms of evaluation.
Mary Douglas demonstrated that institutions and communities shape systems of classification by providing shared categories through which social reality is interpreted (Douglas, 1986). Such classifications allow members of a group to recognize particular actions in relatively similar ways as acceptable, unacceptable, honorable, dangerous, or polluting.
From a cultural perspective, this is crucial. A code of conduct does not operate only because there is a sanction for violating it. Culture first defines what counts as a violation. An action must be given meaning before it can be interpreted as honorable, shameful, proper, or threatening.
Cultural control therefore begins long before direct punishment. It begins at the level of meaning. If an individual learns from childhood that a particular act constitutes betrayal, that person does not experience it as a neutral behavior later subjected to an external sanction. The act has already been incorporated into a system of belonging and moral classification. In this sense, the cultural code organizes perception itself. It does not simply regulate behavior; it offers a framework through which behavior is interpreted.
4. Omertà as a Cultural Practice of Silence
Omertà is one of the clearest examples of how a rule becomes a cultural model of behavior. In popular discourse, it is often reduced to a “code of silence,” but such a definition is insufficient for cultural analysis.
In Philosophy of Southern Italy, omertà is included among the central rules of behavior and is associated with obligations toward the group (Maltsev & Lunev, 2020, p. 161). What matters, however, is not only the prohibition against transmitting information, but also the cultural relationship to speech, silence, and the external world.
The work of Jane and Peter Schneider demonstrates that Sicilian practices of silence must historically be examined within a wider context of honor, relations with the state, local power, and culturally defined ideas of appropriate conduct (Schneider & Schneider, 1976). Omertà should therefore not be understood simply as a technical device for concealing criminal information.
Within a cultural system, silence may function as a sign of identity. It communicates that an individual understands the boundaries of permissible behavior, is capable of keeping a secret, and recognizes membership within a particular network of obligations. In this sense, omertà functions simultaneously as a rule and as a symbolic act.
Theodoros Rakopoulos’s anthropological research demonstrates that, in contemporary Sicily, the opposition between silence and confession itself becomes part of the cultural and political tension between mafia and antimafia spaces (Rakopoulos, 2018). Speech and silence are therefore not merely communicative choices; they may signify social position, moral transformation, and changes in belonging.
The cultural significance of omertà, then, lies in its capacity to organize the relationship to information. Members learn not merely “not to speak,” but to distinguish between people to whom speech is permitted, people from whom information must be withheld, and forms of communication that either confirm or undermine membership.
5. The Cultural Boundary Between Insiders and Outsiders
Every closed cultural system requires mechanisms for drawing a distinction between internal and external space. Such boundaries may be marked through language, ritual, descent, knowledge of symbols, behavioral styles, access to information, or family affiliation.
Fredrik Barth showed that the persistence of a social group depends not only on preserving a stable cultural content but also on continuously reproducing the boundaries that distinguish members from non-members (Barth, 1969). Although his theory was developed primarily in the study of ethnic groups, the principle of boundary maintenance is analytically useful for understanding closed cultural formations more broadly.
Within criminal traditions, the boundary between “us” and “them” is reproduced through several mechanisms at once. Some individuals are granted access to information while others are excluded; new members may pass through rituals of incorporation; particular behavioral styles function as signs of belonging; and breaches of the code may call the status of membership itself into question.
Mary Douglas also emphasized the cultural importance of boundaries, classification, taboo, and the maintenance of systems of order (Douglas, 1966). Cultural systems divide people, objects, and practices into categories, distinguishing what is considered properly placed from what is regarded as anomalous, dangerous, or transgressive.
In this sense, a code of conduct functions as a cultural boundary. It does not merely define what is permitted; it also indicates what forms of behavior distinguish the insider from the outsider.
6. Ritual as the Cultural Formation of Belonging
Belonging becomes particularly durable when it is ritually formalized. Ritual transforms a change in social position into a culturally meaningful event.
Philosophy of Southern Italy describes initiation, oath-taking, and other ceremonial elements associated with mafia traditions (Maltsev & Lunev, 2020, p. 163). From a cultural perspective, the key issue is not to reconstruct every ritual detail, but to identify the role ritual plays in reproducing collective identity.
Victor Turner analyzed ritual as a process capable of marking transitions between social statuses and reconfiguring the individual’s position within a wider social structure (Turner, 1969). Ritual makes a transition recognizable and intelligible both to the individual undergoing it and to the surrounding community.
Initiation therefore performs several cultural functions at once. It separates a previous status from a new one, draws a symbolic boundary between outsider and member, links belonging to a set of obligations, and makes the transformation collectively recognizable.
Ritual also has an emotional dimension. A symbolic act is remembered differently from a simple verbal explanation of a rule. It becomes part of personal biography and can thereby connect an abstract norm with the participant’s own experience.
For this reason, ritual can be understood as one of the mechanisms through which culture transforms abstract norms into lived forms of belonging.
7. Symbols as the Language of Cultural Tradition
Cultural traditions are transmitted not only through direct instructions. A large part of cultural knowledge is encoded symbolically.
Geertz emphasized that symbols allow people to organize experience and give it culturally intelligible meaning (Geertz, 1973). Symbols therefore function as a language through which a culture interprets itself.
In Philosophy of Southern Italy, considerable attention is given to the symbolic components of criminal traditions. The authors discuss religious images, symbolic figures, legends, and representations through which organizations construct narratives about themselves (Maltsev & Lunev, 2020). Drawing on Gratteri and Nicaso, they also refer to the presence of figures such as San Michele and the Madonna di Polsi within the symbolic structure of ’Ndrangheta codes (Gratteri & Nicaso, 2018; Maltsev & Lunev, 2020).
This does not imply an identity between religious culture and criminal culture. A more precise interpretation is that criminal traditions may appropriate already familiar symbolic languages. Established cultural images can then be used to express new meanings connected with loyalty, protection, sacrifice, brotherhood, initiation, or obligation.
Through this symbolic density, a rule ceases to be a simple formula. It becomes integrated into a broader worldview and into the group’s cultural narrative about itself.
8. Legends and Cultural Narratives of Origin
Legends of origin occupy a special position in processes of cultural reproduction. Their significance does not necessarily depend on historical accuracy. From the standpoint of cultural studies, the more important question is what function these narratives perform within collective self-understanding.
Philosophy of Southern Italy examines several legendary narratives associated with the origins of Southern Italian criminal traditions. Some of these narratives contradict one another and therefore require critical treatment as historical evidence (Maltsev & Lunev, 2020). Yet the very coexistence of competing legends is itself culturally significant.
A legend can connect a contemporary group with an imagined past, present its origins as meaningful, and justify existing practices through the authority of tradition. Within cultural memory, historical accuracy and symbolic effectiveness are not necessarily the same thing.
A narrative may therefore remain powerful even when it cannot be treated as reliable historical evidence. It gives the group a story through which identity can be explained.
For cultural analysis, this distinction is fundamental. The question “Did this event actually happen?” must be separated from the question “Why does the group tell this particular story about itself?” The second question is often more productive for understanding tradition.
9. The Family as a Space of Cultural Transmission
The ’Ndrangheta is particularly significant because of the role of kinship in its social organization. This makes the family not only an organizational unit but also a primary site for the transmission of cultural knowledge.
In Philosophy of Southern Italy, family structure is presented as one of the defining characteristics of the ’Ndrangheta. The authors associate family membership with obligation, behavior, and the long-term formation of the individual within the tradition (Maltsev & Lunev, 2020).
From a cultural perspective, the family matters because it is one of the first environments in which a person encounters systems of meaning. Children learn not only through explicit instruction. They observe how adults speak, whom they respect, what behavior is condemned, what is considered a source of pride, and what is not discussed with outsiders.
Cultural models can therefore be acquired before the individual is able to formulate them consciously as rules. This type of transmission is considerably deeper than the simple study of an instruction.
Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice is especially useful here. His concept of habitus explains how social environments produce durable dispositions through which individuals begin to act in patterned ways without constantly consulting explicit rules (Bourdieu, 1977).
Family transmission thus involves more than the transfer of information. It contributes to the formation of habitual ways of perceiving situations, evaluating people, and responding to events.
10. From Explicit Rules to Habitual Practice
The most durable cultural norms tend to cease being experienced as external demands. They become part of everyday practice.
Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is useful in explaining this transition. Repeated social environments generate dispositions that organize perception and action without turning every behavior into the conscious application of a rule (Bourdieu, 1977).
This is particularly relevant to the study of codes of conduct. If a rule exists only as a text, it must be repeatedly consulted and interpreted. If it is reinforced through upbringing, observation, ritual, and repeated practice, it can eventually become an embodied mode of action.
Cultural transmission can therefore be understood as a movement from explicit formulation to practical disposition. The individual no longer asks in every situation what should be done. A particular response comes to appear natural, obvious, or self-evident.
For this reason, cultural reproduction cannot be reduced to direct coercion. Much of the stability of tradition rests on the transformation of patterns of behavior into habitual practice.
11. Written Codes and Cultural Memory
Written codes of the ’Ndrangheta are especially important from a cultural perspective because they demonstrate that a tradition can use oral, ritual, and textual modes of transmission simultaneously.
Philosophy of Southern Italy discusses the copying and transmission of codes and refers to the work of Nicaso and Gratteri, who treat such texts as significant elements within the cultural heritage of the ’Ndrangheta (Maltsev & Lunev, 2020, p. 147; Gratteri et al., 2014).
Jan Assmann’s theory of cultural memory allows this phenomenon to be interpreted more broadly. Assmann argues that cultures preserve significant knowledge through ritual repetition, symbolic practices, and textual fixation (Assmann, 2011).
Writing changes the character of transmission. Knowledge is no longer entirely dependent on the memory of a particular individual. It becomes materially preserved and can be transmitted across longer periods.
At the same time, a text becomes part of cultural memory only when a community recognizes it as meaningful. A document does not reproduce a culture by itself. It must be read, copied, interpreted, and integrated into living practices.
The written code therefore occupies a space between text and tradition. It preserves selected cultural content, but its meaning is continually renewed through use.
12. Reputation as a Cultural Biography
Reputation is often analyzed as a mechanism of social control, but it also has a significant cultural dimension. Reputation is a collectively constructed narrative about a person.
It is formed through memory of previous actions and through their interpretation according to culturally established criteria. The same action may strengthen a reputation in one cultural environment and destroy it in another.
Philosophy of Southern Italy repeatedly emphasizes behavior, dignity, trustworthiness, and the capacity to correspond to particular expectations of the individual within an organization (Maltsev & Lunev, 2020). These themes demonstrate that cultural evaluation of a person cannot be reduced to formal rank.
Gambetta approaches reputation primarily as a mechanism of trust and predictability in mafia environments (Gambetta, 1993). From a cultural perspective, this can be extended further: reputation allows the group to create biographical examples that show others what kinds of behavior receive recognition.
Reputation therefore becomes a means of transmitting cultural norms through concrete human examples. The group does not simply state what a person ought to be; it also points to individuals whose biographies are treated as embodiments of particular cultural ideals.
13. Authority and the Figure of the Cultural Model
Cultural transmission frequently occurs not through abstract rules but through exemplary figures who embody particular ways of behaving. People learn not only through texts but also through imitation of socially significant models.
Philosophy of Southern Italy repeatedly refers to mentors, authoritative figures, and exemplary models of conduct (Maltsev & Lunev, 2020). The authors connect learning with observing how a particular person acts in real situations.
From a cultural perspective, such figures mediate between norm and practice. An abstract concept such as “dignity” may be difficult to define, whereas a collectively remembered story about a particular person demonstrates how that quality is expected to appear in practice.
For this reason, cultural memory preserves not only rules but also people. Such figures become carriers of meaning and enable a tradition to reproduce itself in biographical form.
This mechanism is by no means unique to closed or criminal cultures. Professional, religious, military, and artistic traditions also reproduce themselves through masters, founders, exemplary predecessors, and canonical biographies.
14. Cultural Reproduction and the Transformation of Tradition
Tradition should not be understood as the mechanical repetition of unchanging forms. In order to persist, a cultural system must maintain continuity while simultaneously adapting to changing social environments.
The Schneiders demonstrate through their research on Sicily that cultural models must be interpreted in relation to transformations in political and economic conditions (Schneider & Schneider, 1976). This means that some elements of tradition may persist, others may transform, and still others may acquire new meanings.
The same perspective can be applied to written codes. Even if certain formulations survive over long periods, the contexts in which they are used change. Cultural continuity therefore does not mean the complete absence of transformation.
Varese demonstrates that mafia structures cannot be transplanted successfully into every social environment; their expansion depends on specific local conditions (Varese, 2011). From a cultural perspective, the same applies to tradition itself: symbols and rules cannot simply be transferred as a ready-made package and expected to produce identical results.
A cultural code functions only in relation to people, memory, social relations, and environment. Cultural continuity is therefore a process of ongoing reproduction rather than the static preservation of a fixed set of characteristics.
15. The Sociological Dimension of Cultural Codes
Although the main perspective of this article is cultural, the sociological dimension cannot be eliminated completely. Culture exists within social relations, and rules acquire practical force through structures of interaction.
Paoli and Catino show that the Mafia and ’Ndrangheta possess organizational forms through which roles, information, status, and authority are distributed (Paoli, 2003; Catino, 2019). Maltsev and Lunev likewise connect behavioral rules to organizational hierarchy (Maltsev & Lunev, 2020).
In the present analysis, however, hierarchy is treated primarily as a culturally organized system of difference. Status does not simply involve more or less authority. It may also entail particular modes of conduct, expectations, forms of address, symbolic markers, and ideas of dignity.
Social structure provides culture with relatively stable forms, while culture gives social structure meaning. These levels cannot be separated completely, but the primary emphasis here remains on meaning, representation, and cultural reproduction.
16. Discussion
The material analyzed in this article suggests that a code of conduct is not merely a regulatory mechanism but also a form of cultural memory. It accumulates collective ideas about appropriate behavior and transmits them through multiple channels: family upbringing, ritual, symbols, legend, exemplary figures, written texts, and everyday practice.
The durability of a cultural code depends on the interaction of these channels. A rule that exists only in written form remains an external text. When the same rule is simultaneously supported by family narratives, ritual transitions, symbolic meanings, reputational models, and practical experience, it becomes culturally embedded.
The process may be represented as follows:
cultural meaning → symbolic form → collective classification → behavioral model → ritual or everyday reproduction → personal experience → collective memory → intergenerational transmission.
Sociological mechanisms such as status, hierarchy, sanctions, and reputation remain part of this process, but they do not exhaust it. They provide social structures through which culture becomes durable, while cultural mechanisms explain why these structures are meaningful to participants.
Omertà demonstrates this multilayered character particularly clearly. It is simultaneously a behavioral rule, a mechanism of information management, a symbol of loyalty, a boundary between internal and external spaces, and part of a historically developed cultural model of silence.
Initiation can likewise be understood as both an organizational procedure and a cultural ritual; a written code as both a set of rules and a carrier of memory; kinship as both a social structure and a channel of cultural transmission.
17. Conclusion
A cultural analysis of Southern Italian codes of conduct reveals that they should not be understood merely as collections of prohibitions and prescriptions. They are complex mechanisms through which traditions reproduce ideas about belonging, honor, loyalty, authority, family, secrecy, and acceptable forms of behavior.
The durability of such codes depends on several interconnected cultural processes. Symbols provide a language for expressing cultural meanings; rituals formalize transitions between statuses and reinforce belonging; legends construct meaningful images of the past; the family allows early transmission of behavioral models; written texts preserve selected forms of cultural memory; and reputation and authoritative figures transform abstract norms into concrete human examples.
The process of internalization is particularly important. Cultural norms become most durable when individuals cease to experience them as external instructions and begin to reproduce them as habitual ways of perceiving and acting. Bourdieu’s theory of practice helps explain this transition from explicit rule to culturally formed disposition (Bourdieu, 1977).
Within this framework, omertà is not merely a prohibition against disclosure, but a cultural organization of the relationship between speech and silence. Initiation is not only a procedure of admission but a symbolic transformation of identity. A written code is not simply a collection of rules but a form of preserving cultural memory. The kinship structure of the ’Ndrangheta is not only an organizational principle but also an environment in which patterns of conduct may be transmitted across generations.
The cultural persistence of criminal traditions therefore cannot be explained solely by fear of punishment or by organizational efficiency. It is also connected with the incorporation of norms into language, memory, ritual, family relationships, symbols, and representations of proper conduct. A cultural code transforms individual rules into a worldview through which people understand their own position and interpret the actions of others.
This broader perspective is important beyond the study of criminal traditions. Comparable mechanisms may also operate in professional communities, religious groups, military traditions, family systems, and other cultural formations in which conduct is transmitted not only through formal instruction but through symbolic and practical forms of cultural reproduction.
Author: Anna Kaliuzhna
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