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The most affected are the youth, who are potential source of violent behaviours. The communication revolution is unfolding at a faster rate than the agricultural and the industrial revolution which preceded it. As the futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler put it "The wealth gap has grown rapidly between societies whose accelerative economies are driven by knowledge and advanced technology and those societies whose economies are mired in the traditional agricultural or 'Bureaucratic Smokestack Industry'.

Economic process in the third wave knowledge driven societies are accelerating while those in the first wave agricultural societies and second wave industrial societies are lagging or stagnating. This gap according to them in relative speed is widening.

'Gultang' also speaks of cultural violence: "Mean those aspects of culture the symbolic sphere of our existence exemplified by religion and ideology, language and art, empirical science and formal science that can be used to justify or legitimate direct or structural violence. Stars - crosses - crescents - flags anthems and military the ubiquitous portrait of leaders inflammatory speeches and posters etc. The features mentioned here are aspects of culture. Not the entirety of cultures.

There is no truly violent cultures. But certainly within cultures there are certain aspects which could be used to justify or legitimize structural violence or direct violence. This Galtung Calls Cultural Violence.

All this time what I was trying to do was to introduced a broader definition on violence enabling us to have some understanding on the causality of violence. What I would do now is to see whether to what extent the process of modernization contributes towards creating any of those conditions conducive of violent behaviour of the society. Throughout history world had been celebrating the advent of modernity.

"Modernity is best defined as a metaphor which encompasses a vision of rationality and culture which is not bounded and which is transnational."

As Dr. Kumar Rupasinghe in his article entitled 'Forms of Violence and its Transformation' states any closer look at the modernization process the most visible factor is its continuous attempt to incorporate traditional cultures and their people into a modern project. At the same time throughout history there had been resistance to this. This resulted in the birth of violent social movements.

He further says that the social conflicts which result violence are many fold. Those could be categorized as Ideological conflicts / Governance and authority conflicts / Racial conflicts / Identity conflicts / Interstate conflicts etc. Of these the Identity conflicts are the most pervasive and most violent of conflicts. Identity is conceived of as more than a psychological sense of self. It encompasses a sense that one is safe in the world physically, psychologically, socially.

Even spiritually. Events which threatens the core sense of identity elicit defensive responses aimed at avoiding psychic / physical annihilation. Religion in all its manifestation continues to be a source of identity and meaning in a turbulent and modernizing world. In today's world religion is deeply involved with internal conflict. In spite of prediction that religion would disappear with continuing modernization it continue to provide primary source of meaning and identity to many people whether Christian, Muslim, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus or others. An important sociological clue to the revitalization of the identity and its salience is the concept of relative deprivation.

'Ted Robert Gurr' suggests that the necessary pre-condition for violent civil conflict is a relative deprivation. He defines relative deprivation as "Actors perceived discrepancy between their value expectation and their environment apparent value capabilities. Value expectations are the goods and conditions of life to which people believe they justifiably entitled. The referents of value capabilities are to be found largely in the social and physical environment: They are the conditions that determine peoples perceived chances of getting or keeping the values they legitimately expect to attain".

It is believed that modernization enhances and increase the sense of relative deprivation. What is particular about modernization is the entire drive towards modernity. This can take many forms. Consumerism for example projects a fantasy world which is difficult to achieve. As Rupasinghe explains Modernization process also has been accompanied by a highly centralised and standardize bureaucratic system.

The centralized state and its evolution was the project which was seen as the best vehicle for the evolution of the human civilization. The evolution of the state has been the vehicle upon which violence has been mediated between itself and the people. In this process through the evolution of technocratic/bureaucratic structures it has taken upon itself the monopoly of violence. Sometime it looks that the modern states seek refuge in Machiavellian thought. A perspective that includes the utility of violence against humans.

"In the Machiavellian world six principles appear to be fundamental: Violent is omnipresent and inevitable;...Violence is instrumental; In politics violence is ultimate source of power; Conflicts are to be solved through power and violence; The state and the government are the primary actors of Importance."

According to Samual P. Huntington conflicts between civilizations will be the latest phase in the evolution of conflict in the modern state. He identifies civilization as a cultural entity. Villages, regions, ethnic groups, nationalists, religious groups all have distinct cultures at different levels. He further says that Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future.

According to him the world will be shaped in large measures by the interaction among seven or eight major civilizations. Answering the question as to why civilization clash he outlines several reasons for his anticipation. Firstly he says that difference among civilizations are not only real but they are basic. These differences are products of centuries of evolution. They will not soon disappear. Secondly in consequence to the modernization process the world is becoming a smaller place.

The interaction between peoples of different civilizations are increasing. These interactions among people of different civilizations enhance the civilization consciousness of people. That in turn according to Huntington invigorates differences and animosities, stretching or thought to stretch back deep into history.

Thirdly the process of economic modernization and social change throughout the world are separating people from long-standing local identities. He goes on to say that the clash of civilization occurs at two levels.

At the micro level adjacent groups along the cultural fault lines. The struggle will be over the control of the territory and each other. At the macro level states from different civilizations compete for relative economic and military power. So the violence continue amidst modernization process. It appears that the deficiency mostly lies in the structure and the basic modality of the modern state. It appears that neither of those had been responsive to the expectations created by the process of modernization.

The validity and the ability of a highly centralized form of government to respond to such social expectations is being increasingly questioned today. In the process of globalization the identity of state with clear defined boundaries are getting blurred. To fill this vacuum the human civilization is trying to establish the identities in cultural terms. More vigorously expressed in terms of religion and ethnicity. Professor of political science at Rutgers University in his celebrated article entitled denote these two tendencies as Jihad & Mc World.

These two forces according to him are operating with equal strength in opposite direction. "The one driven by parochial hatreds and other by universalizing markets. The one recreating ancient sub-national and ethnic borders from within the other making national borders porous from without. They have one thing in common he says. Neither offers for hope practical ways to govern themselves democratically."

As we see, if violence in modern society is more fundamental than what is reflected externally where does the media come in to this equation. Are we to exonerate media totally of the blame for violence in society. Unfortunately there is always a tendency to name something as violence and to judge it in the simplistic moral terms. Then search for simple causes of events which happen for a whole variety of complex political and social reasons. In my opinion the problem of media violence should be studied in relations to other institutions and the violence in society as a whole.

Further it should be set within the appropriate social, political and economic frameworks. But this thinking does not anyway suggest that media has no influence whatsoever on violence in society. Rather it encourages us to investigate its indirect influence in creating conditions for violence. In most of the third world countries media had been under state control. Liberalization of media is a recent phenomena. Under the state ownership the conformist role they were compelled to play, to a great extent facilitated structural or the cultural violence perpetrated by the system.

With liberalization the pendulum has swung the other way. In their competition for the advertising market sometimes they surpass boundaries of deasancy. The images created messages transmitted by media make the people dissatisfied with what they have and stimulate them to want more irrespective of the economic circumstances. While the economic status of the country call for much frugal behaviour the media propagate extravagance. Therefore we see within the state two powerful forces working at cross purposes. For poorer sections of the community all this could exacerbate the feelings of frustration and discontent.

The technology has made possible media sans boundaries. Free flow of alien cultural images and values keep further complicating the situation. What counter moves individual countries would take in the form of content in their media productions is yet to be seen in the face of their inability to impose restrictions on free flow of images.

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