Johan Galtung’s Broad Concepts of Violence and Peace – Laying the Foundation Stone for Peace Research

Abstract

Johan Galtung is well known as a founding father of peace research. His broad concepts of violence and peace brought an academic breakthrough against the discipline of international relations. Accordingly, violence is the cause of a recently avoidable difference between actuality and potentiality. In his early writings, Galtung distinguished personal and structural violence, with the former corresponding to negative and the latter to positive peace. He later added a third cultural dimension. This led to a re-adjustment of the complete conceptual apparatus of what becomes manifest in a triangle and a stratum model. Points of criticism are related to theory building, concept construction and presumed political consequences. In some respects, however, these miss Galtung’s point, while in other respects they can be absorbed into the work itself. However, the oeuvre should not be misunderstood as ultimate truth. Nevertheless, it still provides an indispensable foil for all those who deal, academically or practically, with matters of peace.