Peace, Positive and Negative

Abstract

Abstract Any concept of peace includes the absence of direct violence between states — engaged in by military and others — in general and the absence of massive killing of categories of humans in particular. All these absences of types of violence add up to negative peace; as by mutual isolation, unrelated by any structure and culture. This situation is better than violence, but it is not fully peaceful because positive peace is missing in this conceptualization. Indeed, peace would be a strange concept if it did not include relations between genders, races, classes, and families, and did not also include absence of structural violence, the nonintended slow, massive suffering caused by economic and political structures of exploitation and repression (Galtung, 1985); and if it excluded the absence of the cultural violence that legitimizes direct and/or structural violence (Galtung, 1990). Table 1 provides an overview of key terms about positive and negative peace.