Negative Peace Research Articles

Visions of peace: Exploring how Scottish youth understand and define peace

AbstractIn this article, we report on a study that explored how young people in Scotland understand and define peace. A total of 59 young people aged 12–18, from three schools (independent, state Roman Catholic, and state non-denominational) participated in this study. The young people were asked to participate in a peace data walk and, after that, to draw or paint pictures of what peace means for them in their local community and beyond. We utilize a combination of Personal Meaning Mapping, visual content analytic procedures, and visual art coding scheme to analyse the pictures. We drew on Critical Peace Education as an overarching framework to approach data collection and on the Peace Education Curricular Analysis framework to examine the presence of positive peace elements in youth drawings/paintings. Previous research in different contexts suggests that youth find it difficult to conceptualize peace, whereas it appears to be easy to explain war and negative peace (i.e., absence of war). Previous research conducted in Scotland showed that the curriculum focused on the element of wellbeing, with many other positive peace elements being either absent or not well represented. By contrast, youth in our study showed a strong understanding of positive peace, with a particular emphasis on the following facets: peace zone, eco mind, wellbeing, peace bond, and social justice. In our conclusion, we discuss these findings in relation to Scottish education policies and ways of capitalizing on this method of engagement and overall findings to support youth learning about peace.

Peace as Social Cohesion, Equity, and Democracy: Local Peacebuilders’ Conceptualizations of Peace

Peace is something that all societies value and desire, but very few can achieve and sustain. This paper offers an analysis of how local peacebuilders working in contexts affected by violent conflict and in postconflict areas conceptualize peace. Peacebuilders voices were collected through an open-ended survey, consultations on a digital platform called Padlet, and storytelling webinars facilitated by an Australian Indigenous storyteller. In these voices, we find a focus on achieving negative peace and deligitimizing all kinds of violence as well as a strong emphasis on positive peace that includes social cohesion; equity and inclusion; and democracy, human rights, and freedoms.

In Honor of Johan Galtung, the Father of Peace Studies

In this tribute to Johan Galtung, I reflect on Galtung’s groundbreaking work in peace studies, particularly his focus on structural violence and the concept of positive peace. Galtung’s ideas have profoundly influenced scholars and activists, inspiring a shift toward holistic approaches to peacebuilding. Despite initial skepticism, peace studies has gained widespread recognition and integration into academic disciplines. In this essay, I also introduce the concept of ‘hyper’ form of negative peace, emphasizing the need to address historical grievances in peacebuilding efforts. Inspired by Galtung’s vision, the essay advocates for inclusive and participatory approaches to peace formation, envisioning a future where peace is synonymous with justice and human flourishing.

Connecting the dots – poverty, marginality, and the production of aggression and violence in post-war Sierra Leone

ABSTRACT A good collection of existing literature provides limited reflection on classifying post-conflict countries as being ‘peaceful’. This is especially so, as the period following the end of a civil war is normally characterised, as a period of ‘peace’, thereby equating peace to the silence of the guns. Such an understanding of what constitutes peace in post-conflict settings is problematic. This is because, societies in transition, are usually plagued with a plethora of challenges, with the legacies of war normally shaping the resurgence of violence in other forms. Additionally, complex transitions of violence and aggression, which reflect the socio-economic and political gyrations of a society redefining itself, and reconstructing its values are seen in most post-conflict contexts. Thus, using the case of Sierra Leone, this paper argues that some post-conflict settings experience negative peace, and diverse forms of violence that usually render communities unsafe, insecure and not peaceful. Thus, boxing societies in a bracket of being peaceful, because of the end of a violent civil war, limits what peace means in a specific contextual sense. It even undermines the potential for a broader approach towards understanding how the emerging forms of violence and aggression could be addressed.

In Search of a Middle East and North Africa Peace System

This article examines the strengths and weaknesses of the peace system in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It views peace not merely as the absence of direct violence but as the result of institutions and systems that mitigate, defuse, and diminish conflict. The peace system of MENA operates at multiple scales and deals with multiple kinds of violent conflict. Different system components produce different forms of positive and negative peace through both formal and informal institutional channels. Consequently, peace in MENA is often uneven and unstable, with progress in one dimension coming at the expense of another. Understanding the gaps and inconsistencies within the MENA peace system can help devise a more realistic and feasible approach to conflict resolution rather than abstract and ultimately impractical ideals. The article identifies shortcomings in the current explanations for the frequency of war, explores the idea of a regional peace system that operates in regional and domestic arenas both formally and informally, and examines policy measures that might bolster or undercut the MENA peace system.

“Dirty War: Claudia Jones and Opposition to the Indochina War”

Claudia Jones was an advocate of “positive peace.” Positive peace, as it was explained by Johan Goltung, is “the absence of structural violence” which involves the “egalitarian distribution of power and resources.” Positive peace is not just the absence of war and violence (defined as negative peace), but it also includes justice for all people and “the elimination of the root causes of war, violence, and injustice” and a concerted and unified effort to create and uphold a just society. For Jones, this could only be achieved under socialism. She argued that capitalism fomented war, colonialism, and imperialism and it used state violence to secure control over resources and cheap labor. The advent of the Cold War increased the anxiety of individuals like Jones who feared that it made hot war a likely eventuality. Jones argued that the US commitment to containment meant policing the poor and the “darker side of the color line.” She theorized a notion of peace that proposed the destruction of capitalism and the structures it relied on to maintain power; this included racism, sexism, and the prevention of labor organization. Jones was also an anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist and she recognized that US containment policy was merely a re-branding of both. Though Jones died before the US escalated conflict in Vietnam, she watched events in Indochina with trepidation and she argued that the US was heading toward war there.

Governing after FARC: environmental peacebuilding in Caquetá, Colombia

ABSTRACT We examine the environment as a mechanism for building substantial integration in Colombia. In environmental peacebuilding, substantial integration is a positive peace dimension characterized by trans-societal links that foster social cohesion. Employing data from the Amazonian Department of Caquetá, we argue that the Government of Colombia is pursuing a peacebuilding approach that impedes opportunities to forge an inclusive social order. Instead, it has forcibly integrated frontier communities to advance an extractive peace that perpetuates longstanding patterns of resource violence. This generates a negative peace or “antagonistic integration” wherein peacebuilding creates trans-societal links without reducing violent conflict or increasing social cohesion.

Prisoners of Impunity: What the Global Community Should Know about and Learn from the Russo-Ukrainian War

While the world awoke to the horrors of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russia’s military intervention into Ukraine’s internal affairs had its roots in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas. Long before 2014, Russia had sought to influence Ukraine’s electoral outcomes, foreign policy and political alliances, as well as exert economic coercion through trade wars. The overarching imperialist vision of Ukraine has long been evident in political addresses delivered by Russia’s leadership and the narratives projected by state-controlled media. Much of the world community, however, perceived these actions through the lens of Ukraine as a post-Soviet country presumed to belong to the so-called Russian sphere of influence. Despite numerous historic and modern-day atrocities against those perceived to be part of its geopolitical periphery, Russia enjoyed political, economic and moral impunity. Too often, Western powers prioritized regional stability and trade with Russia over upholding the rule of law and respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty. This was evident in the tepid reaction to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the instigation of war in Donbas. Settling for a state of ‘negative peace’ in the case of Minsk accords (2014, 2015) – rather than holding Russia accountable for its actions, revealed a lack of holistic understanding of Russia, Ukraine, and what it truly takes to achieve “positive peace”. This essay offers a broader historical context for Ukraine’s nation building and Russia’s enduring and centuries-long colonial drives toward Ukraine. It argues that the Russo-Ukrainian war, beginning with the annexation of Crimea, marks a unique moment in the post – World War II international world order. This event poses a challenge to the current international legal framework while also presenting an opportunity to draw lessons for preserving the liberal world order.

Peace education for an equitable and sustainable world

Peace is not only the epicenter of the global geopolitics but it has also been one of the most consistent and cherished desires of mankind in every époque. Violence as a discursive method and a mouthpiece of antagonistic epistemologies and hierarchies of value, from youth/gender violence to international warfare, designates peace an imperative task for today’s education. With the aim to synthesize an interpretive instrument for a co-existing, interdependent, and complex system of peace concepts, this paper (1) models an ecology of four peace conceptualizations: Negative peace, Positive peace, Homeostatic peace, Futuristic peace; (2) situates these conceptualizations within peace education and SDGs discourses; and (3) provides theoretical structure for integrating peace and peace education studies in the fields of comparative-international and sustainability education. This theoretical analysis is based on the premise that the purpose, content and scope of peace education for an equitable and sustainable world greatly depend on a concept of peace in the minds of education stakeholders.

Land Boundary Disputes Resolution: A Qualitative Study of Peace and Conflict Resolution between Erinle-Offa Communities in Kwara State, Nigeria

The study focused on land boundary disputes and the resolution challenges in the Erinle-Offa communities of Kwara State, Nigeria. The history of the two communities is laced with hostility and aggression, which has resulted in violent disputes at various times. Quite a number of works have emerged on the causes and consequences of the violent clash. However, the aftermaths of the dispute, especially the tense relationship and peacebuilding process in the area, are yet to be sufficiently interrogated. This study investigated the state of relations between Erinle and Offa as well as land dispute resolution processes in the locality involving complex actors after the last violent clash. It also examined the factors responsible for land boundary disputes between the two communities. The findings showed that negative peace currently exists in the two communities and the land conflict is a perennial one that could arise at any time. The study used both primary and secondary data. The main method of data collection was the unstructured interview, which was conducted with 120 people, made up of traditional rulers, and local, political, religious and youth leaders. Secondary data was sourced from texts, newspapers, magazines, official gazettes, archival materials and the Internet.

Positive peace and environmental sustainability: Local evidence from Afghanistan and Nepal

Climate and other forms of global environmental change are transforming the security landscape where peace and conflict manifest. Given that most studies on the relationship between peace and the environment focus on (the absence of) violent conflicts or negative peace, this study seeks to identify environmental security issues at the local or community levels using the concept of positive peace. A thematic analysis of focus group discussions from Afghanistan and Nepal, two countries with histories of violent conflict and vulnerable to climate change, reveals non-violent security issues that could undermine resilience to conflict and environmental change. In Afghanistan, local communities view poor water quality and inequitable water distribution as outstanding issues related to government inaction. In Nepal, local communities perceive threats of wild animals and agricultural problems as prominent issues linked to inadequate government support. These findings confirm the value of positive peace in illuminating and contextualizing the relationship between peace and environmental sustainability. This integrated framework can contribute to a more holistic approach toward climate security and environmental peacebuilding.

Violent and Unethical Non-Violent Abuse of Faith and Ethnoreligious Sentiments in Southeast Europe: Religious Peace-Building?

The article presents a theoretical and conceptual examination of religious violent and unethical non-violent behaviors, ethnopolitical and clerical synergism, and religious peace-building capacity. I argue that the phenomenon of religious/ethnic violent and non-violent interchangeability adopted by national political unethical behavior has adverse consequences on the post-Yugoslav social behavior and reconciliation process; religions should be a moral peace-building agency. The multiethnic/multireligious socialist Yugoslav society has been violently transformed into influential ethical and clerical cultures, producing antagonistic ethnonational societies sustaining pastoralism as potent identity manifestations of the social capital. War-period visual violence and emotions influenced violent behavior and policy within the discourse "our vs. their sacred ethnic land," creating an unbearable ease of creating fear and motivating violent antagonism and war crimes. The post-war antagonistic media rhetoric, visual antagonism, and abuse of faith adversely impact peaceful coexistence. Ethnic, religious, ideological, and political contextual factors are challenging to generate in post-conflict, divided Balkan societies. Fear of others, religiously distinct, is a category that's difficult to determine and prevent. Western-Balkan societies possess victimological and political mythical conventions, honoring ethnoreligious war victories, defeats, and agonies, maintaining hostility and revenge discourse. Historically, religions were misused to justify violence and maintain non-violence, unethical sociopolitical order, and negative peace. The ideologies of religious superiority intertwine with intensely dominant national perceptions, so belonging to the Serb, Croat, or Bosniak people is equated with Orthodoxy, Catholicism, or Islam. This entanglement is the groundwork for despondency and a hostile peace climate. Current clerical and ethnopolitical policies lead further away from conflict transformation, directing toward the renewal of monotheistic spirituality, cognition, and violence. Political involvement affects "authentic" religion. We should engage in all-inclusive theological and consensus approaches to demonstrate that religions are peace-building agencies, retrieving and revitalizing authentic morality criteria. Religious sentiments mobilize people more rapidly than other identities.

The paradigm of peace enhancing peace culture

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine peace as a paradigm for promoting peace culture.Design/methodology/approachThe paper amalgamates paradigmatic concepts, insights and analytical writing while building on existing literature.FindingsThe findings of this research suggest that the paradigm of peace can be used as a model to promote peace culture and harmony in the 21st century, which is characterized by “hyper” and “super” diversity. Diversity is everywhere, including schools, workplaces and marketplaces. Diversity is very complex and encompasses nearly every element of human life. Diversity should not only be based on the race, culture, ethnicity, religion or gender of an individual. Diversity should be based on the uniqueness of an individual. The fact that we live in a diverse world does not mean that we cannot coexist harmoniously. This paper explores the paradigm of peace research by focusing on how it enhances peace culture to thrive amidst diversity. This study also illustrates that peace and conflict studies cannot be restricted to the resolution of war, violence and conflict. It can likewise aid us in addressing cultural, racial, religious and ethnic concerns. In addition, this research demonstrates that encouraging positive peace (and discouraging negative peace) can be used as a deterrent against violence, including war and conflict. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates the significance of personal peace and some other types of peace. It demonstrates that inner peace combined with external peace yields personal peace. Therefore, an individual may not be able to enjoy the holistic values of personal peace without inner and external peace. Also, this research indicates that encouraging a daily culture of peace can assist us in becoming quotidian agents of peace.Originality/valueMost publications focused on peace and conflict but made no connection between peace and culture. In addition, the majority of publications did not discuss peace as a paradigm that can aid in promoting a culture of peace and nonviolence. In addition, most papers did not link peace culture with diversity. Moreover, the majority of studies did not connect peace with the environment. This study addresses these gaps by introducing peace as a paradigm for fostering a culture of peace amidst diversity in the 21st century. This paper introduces peace as a paradigm for promoting nonviolence, peace culture and harmony. This study also emphasizes the need for environmental peace, thereby increasing awareness of the problems that affect the planet. This study also includes a discussion of positive and negative peace, as well as other definitions and viewpoints of peace. It also underlines the importance of establishing positive peace. This paper can be used as an introductory pathway to understanding the intriguing aspect of peace that fosters a peace culture if practiced adequately and why a peace culture is important in a world of diversity.

Everyday peace in the Ninewa Plains, Iraq: Culture, rituals, and community interactions

Although the need for local ownership of peacebuilding is routinely emphasized, the importance and the modalities of engaging with local cultures and traditions are not adequately understood, and the peacebuilding potential of local customs remains largely unharnessed. Drawing on extensive interviews with community leaders (n94) and farmers and villagers (n107), and using a conceptual framework that combines notions of the everyday and events that mark a rupture with the everyday, this article explores the opportunities that local people’s everyday interactions, culture, and traditions offer for peacebuilding in post-Islamic State Ninewa Plains, Iraq. In doing so, the article makes a theoretical contribution to the everyday peace literature by further developing existing typologies of everyday acts and attitudes of everyday peace. Demonstrating how everyday acts and attitudes of peace sit on a scale with negative peace on the one end and positive peace on the other, the article introduces the concept of ‘affinity’ on the positive peace side of the scale, to refer to an affective engagement with the other and to acts of getting to know, understand, and participate in what is important to the other community.

Security, Conflict Management, and Peacebuilding: Formal Education in Intrastate Political Agreements, 1989–2016

In this mixed methods analysis of a dataset she developed, Giuditta Fontana explores how formal intrastate peace processes have addressed reforms of for mal education since the end of the Cold War. Looking at the frequency of reforms of formal education, the con text for their inclusion, and the framing of their aims, she finds that intrastate political agreements circumscribe the peace building potential of education because they rarely include education as a component, their geopolitical context and broader content are not clearly associated with the inclusion of education reforms, and education reforms are primarily framed as contributing to security and conflict management rather than long-term peace building. With fundamental implications for scholarship and policy, this article shows that peace agreements’ focus on the promotion of negative peace rather than more ambitious positive peace is an obstacle to realizing the peacebuilding potential of education in conflict-affected contexts.

The World as Existential Security: The Concept of Peace of Third Generation

The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that traditional social disciplines have not been able to solve the most important problems of humanity – the elimination of destructive forms of social interactions. The article deals with the problem of conceptualization of the concept of “peace”, the stages of formation of the disciplinary field of peace research. The hypothesis of the study is that understanding the initial intention that prompts the formation of new value orientations in human populations makes it possible to base the modern theory of the world on the concept of existential security. The purpose of the article is to analyze approaches to one of the basic concepts of social and humanitarian disciplines ‒ the category of peace. The use of methods of categorization, retrospective analysis and systematization allowed us to discover the paradigmatic dependence of the content of the concept peace on objective technological and socio-cultural circumstances. The results of the discussion were the following provisions. The first concept of peace, called the negative peace, could not be used as the basis for social construction programs, since it carried all the limitations of the classical paradigm of science, which was formed to serve natural science. The modern, third generation of the concept of peace, which has received the complex name of a multi-inter-transcultural world, is generated by the dangers associated with globalization and entry into digital civilization. Understanding the initial intention that encourages the formation of new value orientations in human populations allows us to base the modern theory of the world on the concept of existential security. The concept of existential security is formulated, which should be understood not as the physical security of an individual, but as the security of the existence of a population that allows preserving the population gene pool. A society that has provided existential security corresponds to people’s ideas of peaceful existence and does not create conditions for war, as one of the forms of violence, or for other forms of structural violence that reduce the adaptive potential of the population. Due to the fact that the adaptability and security of the digital society is ensured by the integrative and communitarian properties of the social system, post-material values are put forward in the first place in the value system in the modern world. They should be the basis of the concept of the existential world.

Religious Culture in Peacebuilding Education

Religion has been examined in various academic disciplines, both mono and interdisciplinary with various accompanying issues, including issues regarding the relationship between religion and culture. This article seeks to show that in the context of peacebuilding education, religious culture plays an important role. This study employs a library research approach. In Indonesia, peacebuilding theories suggest the need for Islamic education as the majority religion in order to the support transformation process relating to changes in negative peace, positive peace, structural violence, root causes of conflict and sustainable peace. This article reveals the process and steps to improve peacebuilding in the implementation of Islamic education. This study is very important to shape a peacebuilding culture in Islamic education where the core values of peacebuilding in Islamic education include the meanings of salām (peace), humanity, harmony and peace, Dar-al-Salam (Home of Peace), peaceful justice through jihad, nonviolence in Islam, justice in Islam and human rights. These core values of peacebuilding education in Islam need to be disseminated and cultivated in all Islamic educational institutions.

Kişisel Rönesans Mekanı olarak Üniversite: Öğretmen Adaylarının Barışı Öğrenme ve Öğretme Aracı Olarak Üniversite Yaşantıları

This phenomenological study aims to understand how future-teachers’ university setting has become a personal awakening place to reflect on their past schooling experiences and build plans as peace agents. In other words, this study argues that university experience, if meaningfully constructed to promote peace, equips future-teachers with the necessary skills to teach peace, and it could help future teachers about critically reflecting their past learnings upon the negative peace and violence. It transforms these learnings into positive peace in the end. Drawing from Freire’s (1970) critical consciousness and Giroux’s (1981,1988, 2010) conceptualization of teachers as transformative intellectuals, the findings suggest that universities by building inclusive, peaceful, democratic, and diverse communities, can help their students to gain the awareness of systematic oppression and structural violence (re)produced by patriarchal, political and social discourses, and it develops motivation to incorporate peace (education) in their professional practices.

The Expanding Concepts of “Peace and Security” in International and European Law: Protecting Sustainable Peace and Human Life in Dignity

On the UN as well as the European level, the concepts of peace and security have been broadened. Negative peace has been extended to positive peace and security from inter-State security against military and hybrid attacks to inter- and intra-State human security from numerous other threats. Security as a multidimensional concept includes democratic, rule of law and human rights, economic and environmental security as well as cybersecurity. Within the framework of the UN collective security system, a European Security Architecture has been established consisting of four complementary organisations: NATO, the Council of Europe, the EU and the OSCE. They jointly contribute to maintaining, promoting or building positive peace and human security in Europe and the wider world. With their different focusses, expertise and strengths – military, political, legal, economic, financial, moral – they strive together to prevent, repel and remove threats in any (including hybrid) form to sustainable peace and human life in dignity. In thus pooling their forces, the four organisations have come a long way, but have an even longer way to go. Especially the EU needs to transform itself into a supranational European Defence Union with its own defence forces.

Wartime Citizenship Education, Discourses of Global Norms and the Contingency of Rights in Sri Lanka

This short article aims to add to ongoing debates on the nature of citizenship education in wartime and its aftermath, against the backdrop of the worldwide ascendancy of a donor-driven, rights-based "global" model, considered in various circles as a panacea for local and global peace. Drawing on the case of Sri Lanka, the article casts light upon the discursive tensions, visible in externally-funded wartime citizenship textbooks, that may accompany the local adoption and adaptation of "global" norms in societies torn by protracted civil war and its legacies. The findings explore a case of the political harnessing of a global type of citizenship education, intertwined with and undermined by a more traditional approach, with liberal concepts of peacebuilding discursively championed, yet effectively rejected. The study thus raises questions around the implications for national reconciliation in a broader context of imposed "negative peace".