Abstract
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2011 study on global violence estimated that if measured by data from public health sources alone, Bangladesh has the highest rate of violence (8.5 homicide per 100,000 population, higher than the global average) within the region of South Asia. The World Health Organization’s World Report on Violence and Health defines violence as the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, or deprivation. From this larger perspective, the rate and the incidence of violence in Bangladesh, taking into account the incidence of different forms of violence such as corporal violence, interpersonal violence, intimate partner violence, sexual violence, political violence, religious violence, and community violence, would be much higher than what is estimated by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2011 study on global violence. This chapter examines this problematic of violence in Bangladesh. The core thesis is that the banality of violence in Bangladesh is related to the lack of a culture of civility—a broad cultural code and a social compact where tolerance, responsibility, and respect are the core values. Following Norbert Elias, one can argue that these values evolve with the evolution of civilization. With the evolution of modern civilization, particularly in the West, violence, in general, has declined because of the exclusive and legal monopoly of power in the hands of the state. Bangladesh must strengthen the state, however, not just by modernizing law and law enforcement but also by creating a culture of democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and equal justice. These values, in turn, will strengthen the culture of civility, and a strong culture of civility may lead to the decline of violence.
Notes
- 1.
Of the victims of this terror attack for which the so-called Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility, there were two Bangladeshis, one Indian, one American of Bangladeshi origin, nine Italians, and seven Japanese.
Reference
Alhabdan, S. (2015). Domestic Violence in Saudi Arabia (Doctoral Dissertation). Maurer School of Law, Indiana University.
Alo, P. (2016, May 28). Tortured Domestic Help Dies at DMCH. Retrieved from http://en.prothom-alo.com/bangladesh/news.
Amin, A. (2006). The Good City. Urban Studies, 43(5–6), 1009–1023.
Arendt, H. (1970). On Violence. New York, NY: Harcourt Publishers.
Bailey, F. G. (1996). The Civility of Indifference: On Domesticating Ethnicity. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Bdnews24.com. (Online Newspaper). (2015). Charge Sheets Filed in Narayangang Seven-Murder against 3 ex-RAB Officers, AL’s Nur Hossain, 321 Others. Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Beckett, K., & Godoy, A. (2010). A Tale of Two Cities: A Comparative Analysis of Quality of Life Initiatives in New York and Bogotá. Urban Studies, 47(2), 277–301.
Bergen, B. J. (1998). The Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt and the “Final Solution.”. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Little Field Publishers.
Boyd, R. (2006) The Value of Civility? Urban Studies, 43(5–6), 863–878.
Carson, J. (2015, May 9). New Zealand Legally Recognizes Animals as “Sentient” Beings. Nelson Mail. Retrieved from http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail.
Chowdhury, K. R. (2016, May 27). Violence Record Level in Local Voting in Bangladesh. Benar News. Retrieved from http://www.benarnews.org/.
Chowdhury, S. T. (2015) Bangladesh: A Dangerous Country for Children. Asia Times. Hong Kong: Asia Times Holdings Limited.
Dawn. (2016). Lightly Beating’ Wife Permissible Says CIIS’ proposed Women Protection Bill. Retrieved from http://www.dawn.com/news/.
Elias, N. (1982). Civilization and Violence: On the State Monopoly of Physical Violence and its Infringements. Telos, 54, 134–154.
Elias, N. (1996). The Germans: Power Struggles and the development of the Habitus in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Elias, N. (2000). The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Elias, N. (2008). Civilization. In Essays II: On Civilising Processes, State Formation and National Identity (pp. 3–7). Collected Works Vol. 15. Dublin: UCD Press.
Girard, R. (1977). Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Halakhe, A. B. (2013). R2P in Practice: Ethnic Violence, Election, and Atrocity Prevention in Kenya. Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect. Occasional Paper No. 4, December. Retrieved from http://www.globalr2p.org/media/files/kenya.
Hobsbawm, E. (2007). Globalization, Democracy and Terrorism. London: Little Brown.
Human Rights Watch. (2015). Bangladesh: End Deadly Cycle of Crimes. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org.
Hunter, A. (1974). Symbolic Communities: The Persistence of Change of Chicago’s Local Communities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ikegami, E. (1996). The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Islam, Z. (2015a, February 8) The Morbid Accomplishments of Bangladesh’s Vigilantes. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.
Karmen, A. (2000). New York Murder Mystery: The True Story Behind the Crime Crash of the 1990s. New York: New York University Press.
Islam, Z. (2015b, July 15). Why Has the Bangladeshi Media to Peddle Blood and Death? The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.
Kendra, A. S. (2015). Violence Against Domestic Workers, and Violence Against Women—Domestic Violence. Dhaka, Bangladesh. Retrieved from http://www.askbd.org/ask.
Kendra, A. S. (2016). Violence Against Domestic Workers and Violence Against Women—Domestic Violence. Dhaka, Bangladesh. Retrieved from http://www.askbd.org/ask.
Khan, M. J. (2016, March 3). Why are Bangladesh’s Children Being Murdered? Dhaka Tribune.
Khondker, H. H. (1986). Bangladesh: Anatomy of an Unsuccessful Military Coup. Armed Forces and Society, 13(1), 125–143.
Khondker, H. H. (2008, September). The Shame of August 1975. Forum, 3(9).
Khondker, H. H. (2009, March 13). Bangladesh’s 9/11: Looking Beyond the Tragedy. The Daily Star. Retrieved from http://www.thedailystar.net.
Lewis, D. (1996). Crime and Community: Continuities, Contradictions, and Complexities. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, 2(2), 95–120.
Manik, J. A. (2004, May 13). Bangla Bhai Active for 6 years. The Daily Star. Retrieved from http://www.thedailystar.net.
Margalit, A. (1996). The Decent Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
McIntyre, S. (2015, May 15). Animals are Now Legally Recognized as “sentient” Beings in New Zealand. The Independent. Retrieved from http://www.theindependentbd.com.
Mehreen, A. A. (2015, July 14). The Height of Inhumanity. The Daily Star. Retrieved from http://www.thedailystar.net.
Mennell, S. (2009). An Exceptional Civilizing Process? Journal of Classical Sociology, 9(1), 97–115.
New Zealand Legislature. (2015). Animal Welfare Amendment Act (No. 2) 2015. Public Act 2015, No. 49. Retrieved from http://www.legislation.govt.
Raffin, A. (2008). Managing Differences through Indifference under Imperial Rule: Theorizing the Concept of Civility of Indifference. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting. Boston.
Roggio, B. (2006, March 6). Bangla Bhai Arrested in Bangladesh. The Long War Journal.
Taylor, R. B. (1999). The Incivilities Thesis: Theory, Measurement, and Policies. In Robert H. Langworthy (Ed.), Measuring What Matters: Proceedings from the Policing Research Institute Meetings. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice.
The Daily Star. (2004, July 23). (A Local English Daily). Bangla Bhai, Media’s Creation. Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The Daily Star. (2011a, July 19). (A Local English Daily). 6 Beaten to Death. Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The Daily Star. (2011b, August 8). (A Local English Daily). Cops Let Mob Beat a Boy Dead. Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The Daily Star. (2012a, September 21). (A Local English Daily). Suspected Child Trafficker Beaten to Death by Mob. Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The Daily Star. (2012b, October 21). (A Local English Daily). BDR Mutiny Trial Ends. Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The Daily Star. (2013a, January 21). (A Local English Daily). Mentally ill Woman Beaten to Death. Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The Daily Star. (2013b, December 18). (A Local English Daily). 8 BCL Men to Hang. Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The Daily Star. (2015, February 16). Star Report, “Arson Attack on Train; 5 Vehicles Torched.”
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2011). Global Study on Homicide. Geneva: UNODC.
Weber, M. (1978). In G. Roth & C. Wittich (Eds.), Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Vol. 1). Berkeley: University of California Press.
World Health Organization. (2002). World Report on Violence and Health. Geneva: World Health Organization.
World Health Organization. (2010). Injuries and Violence: The Facts. Geneva: World Health Organization.
Acknowledgment
I want to thank Shahid M. Shahidullah for his helpful suggestions and support for writing this chapter.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Khondker, H.H. (2017). Bangladesh and the Banality of Violence: Civility, Culture, and Crime. In: Shahidullah, S.M. (eds) Crime, Criminal Justice, and the Evolving Science of Criminology in South Asia. Palgrave Advances in Criminology and Criminal Justice in Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50750-1_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50750-1_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-50749-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-50750-1
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)