Social banditry

Later, social scientists have also discussed the term's applicability to more modern forms of crime, like street gangs and the economy associated with the trade in illegal drugs, or the Mafia.

Hobsbawm's key thesis was that outlaws were individuals living on the edges of rural societies by robbing and plundering, who ordinary people often see as heroes or beacons of popular resistance.

Hobsbawm's book discusses the bandit as a symbol and mediated idea; some of the outlaws he refers to are Pancho Villa, Lampião,[1] Ned Kelly, Dick Turpin, Juraj Jánošík, Sándor Rózsa, Billy the Kid,[2] and Carmine Crocco, among others.

[3] The colloquial sense of an outlaw as bandit or brigand is the subject of the following passage by Hobsbawm:[4] The point about social bandits is that they are peasant outlaws whom the lord and state regard as criminals, but who remain within peasant society, and are considered by their people as heroes, as champions, avengers, fighters for justice, perhaps even leaders of liberation, and in any case as men to be admired, helped and supported.

Sant Cassia observed that Mediterranean bandits "are often romanticized afterward through nationalistic rhetoric and texts which circulate and have a life of their own, giving them a permanence and potency which transcends their localized domain and transitory nature".