Mafia reputation functions as collective capital shared by all members regardless of contribution.

Evidence

We have already seen that reputation is the asset the mafia values most. Its benefits are enormous since once a reputation exists in the protection trade, it is scarcely necessary to produce the real thing. Reputation, so long as nobody challenges it, is the real thing. … Judge Fabio Salamone, with considerable acumen, describes the essential nature of mafia membership in the same terms: “Every associate can use [the strength of intimidation] as an incorporeal good… an asset common to all associates and therefore belonging pro indiviso to every single one of them… It is… ‘capital’ which represents the result of a process of ‘collective accumulation’ and which can provide a ‘rent’ to the individual member even if he did not take part in the process” (OSAG: 280, 287). The safe in which this asset is kept is the name. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 374

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels Bourdieu-style collective symbolic capital and connects to Coleman’s social capital reading; also instantiates Gambetta’s own private-protection model where reputation substitutes for production.
• DEFINE: Clarifies the incorporeal-good theory of mafia intimidation capital as a collective accumulation providing individual rent.