Views on how and where the mafia did appear are more disparate, but the number of meaningful hypotheses is reducible to three. The mafia evolved in areas marked by: (1) economic conflict over the management and appropriation of land and related resources; (2) mobile wealth and numerous transactions, as in urban markets; and (3) political conflict among local factions, especially in connection with the institutional changes effected by the Italian state between 1869 and 1890.

DEFINE: Distills the three hypothesized conditions for mafia emergence: land-resource conflict, mobile wealth in urban markets, and political faction conflict amid Italian state institutional changes.

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Busi…, loc. 206