Social researchers while addressing a two-day international conference underlined factors behind violence and said that violence is present in diverse form in our society and people must eliminate reasons to reduce violent activities.
The international conference titled "Encountering Violence - Recent Research on Pakistan in Comparative Perspective" was organised by Institute of Social and Cultural Studies at its auditorium here on Thursday.
Punjab Higher Education Chairman Professor Dr Nizamuddin was the chief guest while Dean Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences Professor Dr Zakria Zakir, foreign researchers including Professor Dr Wilhem Hietmeyer, Dr Boris Wilike and Ms Rosario Layus from Bielefeld University Germany and presenters including Dr Raghib Hussain Naeemi, Maliha Shah, Muhammad Salman, Dr Amanullah, and Professor Dr Farah Malik, faculty members and a large number of students were present on the occasion.
Addressing the ceremony, Dr Zakria Zakir highlighted impact of violence on the quality of life of individual and tranquility of social system. He said reasons creating and prompting violence were affecting our social and domestic life. He said "our society must eliminate space for violent behaviour and institutionalise the process of reconciliation and dialogue."
Maliha Shah while narrating her study conducted on women of Swat said family values, gendered roles and expectations within marriage as well as the perception of a lack of other options make Swat's women more tolerant of violence. She said a difference of opinion between younger and older women could be observed: the former were less inclined to justify and tolerate violence. She said although women accepted their conventional household roles, women also considered the possibility of becoming more empowered in order to reduce their vulnerability to domestic violence.
Nauman Aqil said he set out to study one more violent and one less violent neighbourhood in Lahore to try to understand how community organisations, physical characteristics and the residents' strategies for crime prevention and control were related to different levels of criminal violence. He said the study found spatial dynamics, population heterogeneity, and a lack of social cohesion were important predictors of criminal violence. He said it was noted that patterns of social interaction among neighbours had undergone significant change over the past few decades. In addition, he said, local strategies of informal social control were limited to random vigilance, settlement of sporadic disputes within community settings, and surveillance of children's activities. He concluded that indigenous means of informal social control could help prevent, or at least control, criminal violence in neighbourhoods.
Presenting his research titled "Justifications and Legitimacy of Police violence: How is Police Violence Legitimised in Pakistan?", Kamran Adil said people come into contact with the criminal justice system in Pakistan largely through the police, and therefore, much of the outcome of the system is dependent on the interaction among the different components of the system. He said the police functions that were assigned by the law could broadly be divided into riot control and investigation of criminal cases categories. He concluded that through interviews with judges, prosecutors, defence attorneys and police officers, the research showed that with various forms of violence, interactions between the various parties involved in the criminal justice system of Pakistan legitimise the use of force.
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