“Organised Crime is a Feminist Issue!”: Patriarchy, Power and Resistance in a Mafia-Dominated City

Abstract

In this inductive process study, we use a Foucauldian lens to shed light on the ways in which ‘patriarchy dismantling’, a form of oppressive work, is conducted in the mafia-dominated city of Catania (Sicily), vis-à-vis ‘patriarchy crafting’, a type of resistance work. Building on Foucault’s view of power as relational and diffused and his understanding of individuals as fragmented subjects, we illustrate how patriarchal domination is perpetuated through the social categorisation, manipulation and policing of the self. However, we suggest, patriarchal power has been challenged in Catania by reclaiming and adapting for an emancipatory use discursive tools previously utilised towards patriarchy reproduction, and by accordingly renegotiating novel forms of selfhood. While resistance work has its limitations and new technologies may undermine it by reproducing repressive gender constructs (Foucault, 1988), they can also be re-appropriated to create liberating meanings. Through our analysis, we contribute to topical organizational studies debates on matters of gender, power and institutional work, and advance a novel theoretical perspective, which we call feminist institutionalism (Mackay et al., 2010).