Description:
<jats:p>The custom of nicknaming has been studied in rural communities throughout Mediterranean Europe. All reports indicate that nicknames are a prominent and critical feature of social interaction within these communities and that they function as mechanisms of social control and social integration. However, the political implications of these findings have not been explored at any broader level. Because nicknaming is a discourse practice used to construct a particular representation of the social world, it may become a mechanism for reinforcing the hegemony of nationally dominant groups over local groups that threaten the production and reproduction of established social power. This study will document how, in the early 1980s in Naples, Italy, the Italian Justice Department used its knowledge of nicknames to identify and prosecute members of an urban network allegedly involved in criminal activities. The article will thus also address the serious limitations of transforming this knowledge into an apparatus of security over large sectors of the underclasses. [<jats:italic>political and legal anthropology, justice, naming and discourse, social identity, urban networks, Mediterranean Europe</jats:italic>]</jats:p>