{"id":3048,"date":"2012-10-26T04:25:53","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T04:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=3048"},"modified":"2012-10-26T04:25:53","modified_gmt":"2012-10-26T04:25:53","slug":"inequality-causes-violence-academic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=3048","title":{"rendered":"‘Inequality causes violence’ – academic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Gender and economic inequality are prevalent in violent societies, a conference on crime reduction heard on Thursday.<\/p>\n

“South Africa is one of the wealthiest countries in Africa, but we also have one of the highest levels of violence,” said KwaZulu-Natal University academic Anthony Collins.<\/p>\n

“There are African countries that are poor, for instance Malawi, but have less violence.”<\/p>\n

He said rich countries, such as the United States, were also violent, because of high levels of inequality.<\/p>\n

“What research is showing is that it is not the poverty; it is the economic inequality that is more significant,” Collins said.<\/p>\n

“South Africa and Brazil are among the most unequal societies in the world and they also have among the highest levels of violence, although South Africa is higher.”<\/p>\n

Collins cautioned that this was not a simple matter of cause and effect. Many other factors had to brought into the mix.<\/p>\n

“There is a lot of social behaviour, cultural traditions, values, ideas [and] historical causes like in instances where societies have been through a lot of conflict, like South Africa.”<\/p>\n

He said in the past there had been two views on violence. One was that people were violent because they disrespected the law.<\/p>\n

Then, the progressive view came which said society was violent because of social circumstances.<\/p>\n

“That was obviously true, but that got over-simplified into this claim that poverty causes violence,” said Collins.<\/p>\n

“It is where you’ve got poverty and wealth in the same society next to each other. This creates a condition in which violence flourishes.”<\/p>\n

Another contributing factor shown by research was the prevalence of gender inequality.<\/p>\n

“A lot of societies where women and men have a more equal status are less violent… in a society with a lot of patriarchal structure, those societies turn to be violent,” said Collins.<\/p>\n

Delegates from around the world attended the conference, themed “National And International Perspectives On Crime Reduction and Criminal Justice”. – Sapa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gender and economic inequality are prevalent in violent societies, a conference on crime reduction heard on Thursday. “South Africa is one of the wealthiest countries in Africa, but we also have one of the highest levels of violence,” said KwaZulu-Natal University academic Anthony Collins. “There are African countries that are poor, for instance Malawi, but … Continue reading “‘Inequality causes violence’ – academic”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[1959,34,636,12250,140],"class_list":["post-3048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-anthony-collins","tag-crime","tag-inequality","tag-south-africa","tag-violence"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/knife_murder.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3048"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3050,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3048\/revisions\/3050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}