Abstract

Please join the Leverhulme-funded Conspiracy & Democracy research project on Tuesday, 29th April at 5pm at the Alison Richard Building (Sidgwick Site) when Mr Dwight Smith Jr will speak about ‘The Mafia & Conspiracy’. Mr Smith’s paper will explore how the idea of the mafia and conspiracy emerged in America, developed and became entangled in very different contexts.

Mr Smith will describe the ideas, experiences, and events through which his book, ‘The Mafia Mystique’ (1975), took shape; the consequences of those events that have led to contemporary public understanding and use of ‘Mafia’ in the United States; and the consequences in a democracy of strategies that were developed for organized crime control.

The event will be followed by a wine reception.

Mr Dwight Smith Jr holds a Bachelors Degree in Government from Yale University and a Masters Degree in Public Administration from Syracuse University. He wrote ‘The Mafia Mystique’ (Basic Books, and Hutchinson & Co., 1975), which examines the role played by the ‘Mafia’ label, from its emergence in 1890, in developing public opinion and government policy towards organized crime in the United States. He is now retired and lives with his wife in Slingerlands, New York.