by PolackTony » Fri Jan 19, 2024 8:56 am
johnny_scootch wrote: ↑Fri Jan 19, 2024 8:45 am
CabriniGreen wrote: ↑Thu Jan 18, 2024 10:58 pm
I mean...look at Vitale. He was basically shelved, WITH his title...
He was ostracized within his own family to a degree but he could still interact with members from his other families. On the shelf means no one in the entirety of LCN can or should.
Yeah, I think it’s important to also emphasize that a guy just getting sidelined or getting the cold shoulder isn’t the same thing as being shelved, which is a change in a member’s relationship to the organization (as you note, meaning the entire network rather than just the member’s Family). It’s a change in a guy’s status, formally, what anthropologists call a “social death”: exile, loss of one’s identity and place in their community and social network (similar to how the making ceremony is a symbolic death and rebirth into a new “life” as a “man”). As B noted, this is how Michael D has characterized it. It’s the next thing to clipping a guy. In recent years, given the decline in mob murders, it’s also presumably used a lot more than in the past I’d think. Like, 40 years ago they’d have just whacked a guy out, but now they are much more likely to shelve him.
[quote=johnny_scootch post_id=273421 time=1705679122 user_id=105]
[quote=CabriniGreen post_id=273409 time=1705643893 user_id=5378]
I mean...look at Vitale. He was basically shelved, WITH his title...
[/quote]
He was ostracized within his own family to a degree but he could still interact with members from his other families. On the shelf means no one in the entirety of LCN can or should.
[/quote]
Yeah, I think it’s important to also emphasize that a guy just getting sidelined or getting the cold shoulder isn’t the same thing as being shelved, which is a change in a member’s relationship to the organization (as you note, meaning the entire network rather than just the member’s Family). It’s a change in a guy’s status, formally, what anthropologists call a “social death”: exile, loss of one’s identity and place in their community and social network (similar to how the making ceremony is a symbolic death and rebirth into a new “life” as a “man”). As B noted, this is how Michael D has characterized it. It’s the next thing to clipping a guy. In recent years, given the decline in mob murders, it’s also presumably used a lot more than in the past I’d think. Like, 40 years ago they’d have just whacked a guy out, but now they are much more likely to shelve him.