Abstract
The idea of organized crime was born in a normative context to designate a social problem. But the development of the theory about him rarely made clear what his sociological problem was. The purpose of this article is to rescue what organized crime has to say about social action, order and change. For this, it reviews studies that inaugurated an innovative perspective of description or explanation about the object. The conclusion is that, if treated with sociological clarity, organized crime has much to contribute to sociological theorizing, as it represents a boundary case for these three basic questions of any social theory.
Keywords
Violence; protection; social theory; social action; social change; social order