Violence: A sociological insight

It was an early morning in East Africa. I am about to start for my university. Due to emergency invoked by government, there is no regular transportation. Army and police are everywhere to curtail protest and used as a precautionary measure to handle any violence. Meanwhile, I am at leisure to look at some Odia online newspapers. In Odisha also the headlines of papers are covered with violence. Those are Political as well as personal violence. It is really disturbing. I teach criminology and deviance studies in university. Theoretically I understand violence. It is an aggressive form of deviant behaviour. The range of violence covers micro to global level.

Violence is a serious violation of human rights. Human rights are meant to safeguard the human lives, their dignity and their freedom at every point of time. But it has been ignored repeatedly. Of course, we do have international and national level of laws to protect the human rights. Sometime violation of human rights issues are the effect of governance and policy decision. We blame governance and its interrelated institutions. Human rights have categorized the forms of violence into many types. It can be defined from state sponsor to traditional to individual.

The forms of violence are rapidly changing. They have changed their structural and functional dynamics. It is not only the new technology but most of the cases romanticism also spurs the new form of violence. The ultimate end of any form of violence is perilous to society. We know it. Our rationality and morality vary often bend before aggression and dominance. It makes us a rational fool and cultural dope. There are myriad of socio-psychological theories of violence. They narrate violence and cause of violence as biological sub structure or psychological superstructure of the individual or individual relationship to the social environment.

Any form of violence is pathological. It asphyxiates the human relationship, human lives and wellbeing. It shuns the value of human equality. We need a response to handle this. The response may be personal or civil. Those can be achieved only through community and interpersonal based social action. As a sociologist, I firmly believe denial and fear for the violence should be stopped from the micro level. Another factor which provokes violence is the relative approach of society towards this.it is not happening to me/us mind-set. Society has constructed the horizon and paradigm of violence and labelled it.

Civil society and community engagement in safety are considered as the immediate solution for violence. Since the traditional communities are losing their grip on citizens, their socialization, value incorporation and local policy making, the new forms of civil society come forward to shape the victimization and citizen wellbeing. The emerging forms of new communities are moulding the intra and inter relationship among the individuals. Over all the civil society and community compel the moral obligations as active citizens and engross the social justice.

Some extent our social narratives and social communication are also equally responsible for augmenting violence. We give more attention to violence and promote violence, knowingly or unknowingly. It is whether in the form of movie or mythological stories. We live in a country where non-violence has grown up from a movement to an ideology. But still we failed to practice it. Violence is a heedless and impetuous behaviour; on the other hand non-violence embarks a new pure form of conscience and self-policing.   We should practice the Gandhian ideology of nonviolence where you fight with extreme brazen force without using the force in return.

The areas of concern for violence and its impact attract many think tanks. The dimensions of violence are different but the indigenous nature is same. Violence is contagious. There is no panacea for this. It is growing as an epidemic. From school killing in USA to genocide in Africa or honour killing in India, it has contaminated the global society and human values. Social advocates mull over always to find the cause and blame a particular class, religion, race, community or gender. But real truth is that it has become an insidious undercurrent behaviour which cannot be ignored because of our evolution as human being.

Social wellbeing can be used as an antagonistic factor against violence. Social wellbeing consists of social security and its associates elements. It can be achieved by tolerance, equality, individual welfare, respect and forgiveness. The role of state and its institutions are equally important to channelize those into individuals. In addition to this, violence victimization should be handled in human ways. Society should learn how to take care of violence victims rather to label or stigmatize them. The pejorative way of society in assimilation makes them ghettoized and social pariah.

We are living in a welfare global state.  Therefore we feel secured we strive for security, we demand for security as well. We live in group or in community for security.  Because of the security alone singular “I” convert to plural “We”. But the violence dishevels our boundary of security. Then we ponder over for different alternative security mechanisms. It is becoming a cyclical. This is not the solution. Unless and until we consider the fellow being as like us, it will be easy to hurt every time. Unless and until we feel the core inside of human beings and we pay respect for the humanitarian values, violence will be regular phenomenon. We should learn how to forgive others. Forgiveness is the salvation from the cycle of hate.