Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, language: English, abstract: Nowadays the word 'Mafia' refers nearly all groups or gangs involved in organized crime. However, originally, Mafia meant an organized criminal organization of Italian, predominantly Sicilian, heritage. In fact, this word is a mere literary creation while the real name is 'Cosa Nostra' meaning 'our thing'. For many years the common understanding of the Mafia was strictly limited by argument on whether there even was a Mafia. In the recent decades that argument was more or less settled, and the principal argument remaining is whether or not organized crime and the Mafia are one and the same thing. According to Finckenauer: To this end, this useful primer to the phenomenon quite rightly tarts with a simple question that begs a complex answer: what is organized crime? Sometimes, the mobsters are easy to identify, a collection of ne'er-do-wells with no visible source of income but owning flashy cars and homes; involved in the staples of organized criminality, whether trafficking drugs or infiltrating legitimate businesses. The old stereotypes, which were always something of a caricature, are becoming even less applicable in the modern world. [...] In part the confusion revolves around an understanding of the real nature of organized crime that existed since the earliest days of the nation and, indeed, earlier. It is worth remembering that, organized crime achieves its status not only by the fact of groups of practitioners, but also due to the fact that organized crime is syndicate crime in which certain activities are apportioned out to the various gangs and honored in the main by these gangs. What is interesting, in the beginning and even till the 1950s, many people regarded the Mafia not as law-breaking criminals but as role-models and protectors of the weak and the poor, as the state offered no protection to the lower