Initiation rituals substitute family blood-bonds for tracking membership identity

Evidence

Now Mr. Maranzano said to everybody around the table, “this is Joe Cago,” which I must explain is what most of the guys know me by [“Cago” was a corruption of “Cargo,” his nickname as a boy). Then he tells me to sit down in an empty chair on his right. When I sit down, so does the whole table. Someone put a gun and a knife on the table in front of me. I remember the gun was a .38, and the knife was what you would call a dagger. After that, Maranzano motions us up again, and we all hold hands and he says some words in Italian. Then we sit down, and he turns to me, still in Italian, and talks about the gun and the knife. “This represents that you live by the gun and the knife,” he says, “and you die by the gun and the knife.” Next he asked me, “which finger do you shoot with?” I said, “this one,” and I hold up my right forefinger. I was still wondering what he meant by this when he told me to make a cup of my hands. Then he put a piece of paper in them and lit it with a match and told me to say after him, as I was moving the paper back and forth, “this is the way I will burn if I betray the secret of this Cosa Nostra.” All of this was in Italian … [The Cosa Nostra] comes before everything—our blood family, our religion, our country. … When that happens Maranzano says, “this blood means that we are now one Family.” In other words we are all tied up. Then he explains to me how one member would be able to recognize another. If I am with a friend who is a member and I meet another friend who is a member, but the two of them do not know each other, I will say, “Hello, Jim, meet John. He is a friend of ours.” But like if the third guy is just a friend and not a member, I would say, “Jim, meet John. He is a friend of mine.” Now the ceremony is over, and everybody is smiling. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 716

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The ‘friend of ours’ vs ‘friend of mine’ recognition code is a concrete mechanism of membership signaling that parallels the reputation-and-information gap analysis in Milgrom et al. — private, costless identity verification substituting for institutional registration.
• XREF: connects to: Movements succeed by exploiting kin-selection psychology through bonding rituals. — Scott Atran, The Devoted Actor: Unconditional…, 58