The old Mafia of Sicily was a pre-industrial peasant institution. Its organization was intimate and diffuse. It now operates in the highly urbanized and industrialized milieu of the United States. As an urban, industrial institution it has envolved into a different kind of organization. The real and fictive kinship ties of the old Mafia are still utilized among fellow Sicilians and Italians. But these ties are now subordinate to bureaucratic ones as defined in terms of specialization, a hierarchy of authority, a system of rules, and impersonality.