Everybody does it, or how illegality is socially constructed in a southern Italian food network

The paper points out the institutional transition toward illegality in a typical Italian food chain. The key research questions concern the way illegality becomes an institution. The theoretical perspective makes reference to institutional theories: more precisely, building on Veblen's insight into the evolution of social institutions, the paper analyses the conventions of production within the domestic water buffalo mozzarella industry to argue that legality and illegality are not universal values, but social constructs that are the product of institutional selection. Through an empirical analysis carried out on the production area, the authors argue that the practices of production of mozzarella producers are based on the nature of the system of power in place locally, characterized by the endemic presence of organized crime, and the historical inefficiency and corruption of state officials. It emerges from these practices that, in this production area, producers perceive legal and illegal acts not as mutually exclusive opposites, but as a possible behaviour along the same legality/illegality continuum. The culture of illegality in place in the area of mozzarella production is thus explained as an ongoing process of institutional selection that promotes illegality as the “way of doing things” in the region.