Having been shocked when personally witnessing the extreme brutality of vigilante violence, sociologist Muhammad Asif decided to study why people take the law into their own hands. His work culminated in a new theory of the causes underpinning vigilante violence, which combines explanatory factors such as distrust of the state or the police, and strong emotional reactions to violations of moral values. Asif’s study took place in Pakistan, but his insights are also relevant to other cases of collective violence around the globe. He will defend his Ph.D. thesis on Wednesday, 2 February, at the University of Amsterdam.
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Source: Phys.org