Amirah/tjc09_Violence

In passage 1, the writer of Newsweek says that ‘Clearly culture matters’. This implies that a nation’s culture is partly responsible for the amount of criminal violence committed outside wars and civil conflicts. A possible explanation would be the acceptance of immigrants in a nation. If immigrants do not feel accepted, disastrous consequences could occur which could hurt society as this minority may result to ‘criminal violence’ to get attention or vent their anger. This notion is highly relevant in Singapore as she is a cosmopolitan country with quite a large number of foreigners residing there. If the immigrants here are extremely displeased, a social conflict may occur as the number of foreigners is a significant enough to stir trouble. For example, there are cases where domestic workers attempted to harm their employers. However, this is applicable to a small minority and may not always be the case. Even though there are 34.6% people living in Singapore in 2008, the number of criminal violence committed by them is minimal and almost non-existent. Therefore, although the writer claims that a country’s culture is partly to be blamed for criminal violence, it is inaccurate. Thus, it is not applicable in my society.

In passage 2, Oliver Roy writes that violence occurs due to ‘anger fuelled by unemployment and racism’. This implies that lack of jobs as well as discrimination of one’s ethnicity and skin colour leads to discontentment. This can be applied to my society to an extent. For example in 1964, race riots occurred between the Malays and Chinese. It was sparked by articles in a Malay Newspaper, Utusan Melayu which fueled the Malays’ anger at being mistreated. Hence, racism may lead to violence in my society. However, the author’s claim that unemployment may similarly lead to violence is flawed and not entirely applicable in my society. For example, the 2008 economic slowdown caused many in the airline and banking industry to be retrenched. Yet, there were no cases of violence reported. Hence, the author's claim is flawed and not entirely applicable in my society.