La Sicile, laboratoire de la mobilisation citoyenne contre la mafia (1982-1992)

This contribution is an introduction to the five articles in this issue that deal with antimafia. It focuses on the first reactions of a part of Palermo’s civil society to mafia violences. In the wake of the “moral shock” caused by the murders of State agents, citizens’ initiatives in the 1970’s and 1980’s came to represent, because of the actors they mobilized and the kinds of actions they adopted, a paradigm that would spread to other regions afflicted by mafia criminality. Sicily is therefore a real laboratory for antimafia civil mobilization.