Atmospheric Production of Nostalgia: Walking Through Little Italy in New York City Between Mafia Landmarks and Italian Heritage

Abstract

Abstract This article focuses on mafia-themed tours through Little Italy and Nolita in New York City to interrogate how they reproduce La Cosa Nostra’s, the Italian-American mafia, ongoing relevance. The study shows how this type of ‘dark tourism’ distils complex histories into marketable myths that stabilize past reputation and translate it into present-day social (and eventually criminal) power. The walking-narrative and atmosphere approach combines participant observation and audio-visual records of guides’ narratives. The paper argues that mafia tours function as active cultural infrastructure equating mafia history to Italian heritage: tours perform, legitimize, and circulate the symbolic currencies by which La Cosa Nostra remains legible and actionable in contemporary urban and criminal spheres, through the ‘atmospheric production of nostalgia’.