Publisher's Synopsis
The manifestations of what mainstream criminology identifies as organized crime have long existed in Greece and, in some respects, exhibit deep roots in the country's economic and cultural history. The term 'organized crime' was only brought into currency in the 1990s by the Greek media. Curiously, this was not a development preceded or followed by extensive and reliable research. From a criminological viewpoint, very little is known about organized crime in Greece, either in general or on specific types of organized crime. As case studies and official accounts are few and far apart, the widespread use of the term in public debate bears more the unmistakable marks of truthiness than factuality. This book challenges the taken-for-granted mainstream accounts which feature a certain exceptionalist notion of organized crime that is invariably associated with certain groups and milieus - a dark and obscure underworld radically separated from an orderly and lawful upperworld. The book's five case studies directly challenge this view across a range of illegal markets: the cigarette black market * the car theft and trafficking business * the Ecstasy market * human smuggling and trafficking * the counterfeit CD/DVD market. The concluding chapter provides a synthesis of the empirical evidence and connects research findings with a series of questions of both theory and policy. [Subject: Criminology]
