Johan Galtung
And Early Peace Thoery

Much of today's lecture will follow up on last week's discussion on violence and conflict, our professor says.

She repeats how these words, conflict and violence, are slippery to define. For some, they refer to overt acts of physical aggression (known in the field as direct violence), but for others even phenomena like preventable malnutrition or disease can fall into the category of structural violence.

The concepts we looked at last week (direct, structural and cultural violence) were popularized by Johan Galtung, a pioneer of peace and conflict studies as an academic sphere. He promoted a broader understanding of both violence and conflict, particularly in how exactly one can lead to the other. And, he claims, if we have a narrow definition of violence then we can miss out on important, underlying causes. Since he was interested in research that leads to better interventions to build peace, he opted for a model that, he says, gives a more comprehensive understanding of how conflict and violence work.

But we'll start with a biography first

Galtung was born in 1930, in Norway, and died in early 2024. His father was sent to a concentration camp after the Nazi invasion of Norway in WWII and, even after his father returned, young Galtung developed a resistance to the idea of war. It was a destructive phenomenon, he thought, and was intrigued by Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent work.

He was a mathematician by training and much of his early work was informed by formula and classification. He wanted to put violence (and peace) on spectrums and find ways to quantify them. This makes some of his early work hard to read. He eventually he founded his own organization (Transcend) to make his ideas on peace and conflict more accessible. He has written a great deal since those days, and his latest work was published in 2014 or 2015.

His impact on the field led some to call him the "father of peace studies." Our professor advises us to check out more of his work. One aspect that makes his approach particularly relevant is that he deals with both theory and practice – he has resources on being a mediator, for example.

One of his early frustrations was that he found a great deal of work about war but very little about peace. Even today, war is studied far more than its resolution, and violence more than nonviolence. There are promising movements today like those that study and work towards conflict transformation, but this is a relatively recent phenomenon.

For Galtung, what wasn't happening was a dedicated analysis of just what the necessary conditions to bring peace are and how to bring them about.

Gandhi was a major inspiration in this regard, as was Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss (who later coined the term 'deep ecology'). Næss was interested in an idea of 'social peace,' which also took from and developed Gandhi's thought.

This focus on nonviolence as a response to conflict sometimes gets him labelled as a 'softie' or 'idealist', and our professor wants to draw attention to the extent Galtung is actually a pragmatist. Part of this pragmatism, of course, was in how he wanted to classify different kinds of peace. He originally claimed that there were 35 classes of peace theories, and eventually UNESCO asked him at the end of the 1960's to develop them into a book called Theories of Peace.

His definition of violence (which not everyone will agree with) goes like this:

Part of what made his model innovative was that his focus wasn't only on overt expressions of violence (like physical attack, verbal assault and so on) but also on the less-than-obvious social structures that prevent certain people (or groups of people) from living full lives.

This goes against philosophies and ideologies (Marxism, for example) that say violence can be productive. Galtung disagrees sharply with this point of view and claims that organized nonviolent resistance is more sustainable and effective.

This thought generates discussion in class, particularly with what you do when a government is thoroughly bad (and people violence want to overthrow them and put a better one in its place), but our professor says she isn't here to point us one way or the other. Someone says that nonviolence is most productive when it's done right, as an organized movement that effectively applies pressure when working towards its goals (like with Gandhi or Martin Luther King).

Of course, not everyone agrees. There are plenty of examples in military thought that claim violence is necessary for lasting peace.

The caveat here, though, is that while in Galtung's philosophy violence is always destructive, conflict itself can be productive. If a couple is having an argument, for example, it can escalate to violence, but it can also lead to a more honest encounter with the other. Crucial needs and interests can be unearthed, confirmed and met.

There are a number of tools and paradigms that Galtung developed that can help us understand conflict and how it works. This includes four key concepts: actors, goals, incompatibilities and the ways we resolve them.

Figuring out who is or isn't an actor is important. Is the government an actor here? What about cultural figures? Or the economic system? Economic factors are important to our professor, and she lists examples involving the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. They have certain programs that can lead to resource extraction, which can lead to inequalities in less-developed but resource-rich nations. Or there might be certain programs that are meant to alleviate poverty but end up entrenching it (often unintentionally). For some, this is a conflict (and an example of structural violence, as described below). For others, this is just business – and if we want it to improve, we would just have to tweak the business practices.

The next major factor is understanding the goals involved. Following through on the above example, think about goals of economic systems. On a basic level it's a system of barter and exchange that helps us to survive, but the system is uneven and unequal throughout the world. Goals can involve wealth (or poverty) creation, the maintenance of affluence or sustaining export economies (which then affect land use and subsistence farming). In this case, many of the negative effects that lead to injustice (and which may eventually lead to people starting an armed conflict) are negative. But in other examples there can be intentional goals that create further incompatibilities.

This concept, incompatibility, is another thing we can analyze. Are the interests and goals of these different actors incompatible with each other? Does conflict rising out of this? Are these incompatibilities inherent to the situation, or can we suggest creative solutions that help both sides meet their needs? Are the actors thinking about their own interests alone, or do they take into account some concept of the common good?

Following up on this, the last concept we discuss are the ways people try to resolve these incompatibilities. You could also call this one "strategies." Maybe the goals/interests aren't incompatible, but the ways they try to meet them are.


These four factors are mostly about conflict, and then violence itself can rise out of these conflicts – though violence doesn't always occur. There can be no violence without conflict, but there can be conflict without violence. The relationship between the two does make them appear fluid, and that can be confusing when it comes to where one ends and the other begins.

Last week we took a brief look at Galtung's famous conflict triangle and we'll spend a bit more time on that today. Imagine a triangle, with three points called direct violence, cultural violence and structural violence. Direct violence is the top point, and the other two are on the bottom.

This is the one that many of us associate with the word violence: physical attack, hitting, sexual assault, humiliation, verbal abuse, etc. These are overt expressions of what Galtung calls "the avoidable impairments of fundamental human needs." When someone is doing direct violence to you, basic needs like safety, security, life and others are being impacted.

He also includes into direct violence the threat of force. In many cases (we use the example of South Africa during apartheid), sometimes the threat of force is all that's necessary to get people to do what you want. This is also relevant when it comes to terrorism: you don't actually need to kill a lot of people. The thought of people dying is enough to terrify people into changing their behaviour.

It's good to remember that the threat of force is often effective because the person or group doing the threatening has history of using force.

One of Galtung's major contributions is the concept of structural violence, which claims that society can structured in a way that's violent. Think about economics, educational systems, food production, health care, political representation and more. There often isn't one person doing something bad to someone else so much as an amorphous pattern of behaviour that creates a situation where some individuals or groups face unique barriers to meeting their needs.

Think about situations where some people have less access to healthcare due to war, are imbedded in social traditions that prevent them from having an education or face higher levels of discrimination in society. In some (but not in all) cases, sustained inequality leads to grievances that inspire people to pick up weapons.

Important here is the word "avoidable." There are unavoidable phenomena, like a volcano erupting, or a lack of resources that comes more from a hurricane or drought rather than human action. These forms of deprivation are not considered to be structural violence (unless the drought was caused by human action). For the most part, Galtung is interested in the avoidable things that affect our ability to live our lives.

Galtung defines cultural violence as the attitudes and beliefs that support or make direct/structural violence possible. Think about the stories we tell ourselves about who is good or bad (or who deserves what rights, or who is worth saving). The narratives we find in history books, if they dehumanize one group of people or glorify/deny atrocities, are examples of cultural violence.

Violence, as a force that impairs our ability to meet our basic needs, can also be reproduced in art, media, advertisements, the way news is written, all that stuff. This could be overt, with people creating content that oppresses certain individuals or groups. This can be subtle, like with how only certain groups are represented or promoted as normal. If you don't see your needs as equal to the needs of favoured groups, the argument goes, you might accept that your needs are less important than others'. Or you might fight to create space for your needs.

Cultural violence is also said to manifest itself in the way violence can be glorified or normalized in society. In violent media, for example. Or in ways that there are more movies glorifying fighting than choosing nonviolence. There's a long tradition of entertaining ourselves with violent art, and Galtung refers to this as a "diet of violence" that makes it seem normal. We may not mimic violence because of the shows we watch, but there's the chance that violence becomes internalized, acceptable. We get desensitized, and it might be hard to resist expressions of direct violence when they do emerge.

There's also the thought that our educational systems don't give us the resources or know-how to create peace in our communities. This gap (in our "educational diet") can be seen an example of cultural violence. To rectify this, we would need to promote conflict resolution mechanisms in education and culture. Imagine, for example, if kids watched shows where Pokemon negotiated with each other rather than fought?

There's also the question of what values are transmitted in our cultures. Most cultures recognize that random killings are unacceptable, but that killing large groups of people in war is acceptable so long as you follow the rules. Or that killing innocent people is okay so long as you also kill some bad guys. Or that violence within romantic contexts is less bad than that between strangers. Some consider these values a form of cultural violence. Practitioners like Galtung say we need to track these ideologies in our cultures, find out how they work and try to resist them.

Our professor asks us to think of examples of structural and cultural violence. Someone mentions the lack of access Indigenous people living on reserves have to the same kinds of education that Canadians who live in larger cities have access to. Someone mentions how queer people in Russia are more likely to face violence than those in homosexual relationships. Someone else mentioned a situation in the Niger delta (in Nigeria) where Shell, the oil company, exploited the land of a cultural group that, because they are politically marginalized, didn't have the ability to fight the company effectively: Shell then spilled tons of oil into the ecosystem.

This morning on the CBC (which doesn't normally use discourse like structural violence), there was a woman who talked about which communities in Ottawa were more likely to contract COVID-19 that year. These often included racialized neighbourhoods, low-income families, multi-generational households and people who work in the service industry. This may be because the way society is structured makes it harder for them to protect themselves, and not even increased numbers of testing centers address the issues involved. The issues, the argument goes, are deeper: it's in the way these people are expected/forced/choose to live their lives.

Many people talk about how the top point in the triangle is visible – the bottom two are more hidden. They're more subtle, sometimes invisible, which makes them harder to address. There are certainly cases of direct violence that are random, gratuitous and individual, but sometimes they're motivated by an underlying system. And we may not be able to deal with the root causes that are invisible, widespread and normalized.

It's easier analyzing apartheid in South Africa, for example, because there are plenty of examples of direct violence. Conflicts surrounding Indigenous issues in Canada are tricker to discuss because much of the violence or oppression is structural or cultural.

Other factors that complicate our understanding of violence, conflict and oppression include how some acts of violence are sanctioned by government systems. Think about how some people are allowed to carry (and use) arms, like the police. For some, the police are an expression of order in society, a force that keeps chaos at bay. For others, the police are often guilty ofall kinds of violence (many make this claim in the US in the wake of the George Floyd killing). But it can be harder to address this because police violence is seen as more legitimate than non-police violence.

Another complicating factor is that certain kinds of violence are intentional, while others are unintentional. It's one thing to prosecute intentional violence, but who do you blame when a system is at fault? Or when a person reproduces discrimination or structural/cultural violence without being aware of it?

There's not only the issue of perpetrators of violence being unaware – victims can also be left in the dark. Paolo Freire, a Brazilian thinker famous for his book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, says that people can internalize and normalize the violence they suffer to the point where they don't notice it. He coined the term conscientization to refer to the process of becoming aware of these structures. Our professor claims that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement's 2020 protests were an attempt at conscientization.

Any mention of BLM creates fierce discussion among our group, especially with regards to violent and nonviolent ways of reaching one's goals. Some say that violence, like statue toppling, hurting police officers or destroying property, are necessary to expose and resist structural violence against black people. Others say that we need to stick to peaceful protests. Still others say that racism, even if pervasive, isn't reason enough to be violent in response. They claim that only direct violence is truly violent, while structural and cultural violence are something else entirely, something that's much less of a problem.

One person challenges the professor: what if violence can be constructive, even necessary? What if nonviolence doesn't take us far enough, or what if our nonviolent leaders keep getting killed? Our professor promotes nonviolence but doesn't tell us to agree with her outright. She presents Galtung as an example of nonviolent thought.

She just wants us to keep in mind, no matter our defintions, that structural and cultural violence have very real consequences on people.

Paul Farmer, a researcher who worked a lot in Haiti, saw that locals there had physical problems resulting from structural inequalities. Faulty transportation affected livelihoods, pollution and land quality affected health. These issues held people back from improving their situation, and so he applied the idea of structural violence to discuss public health. These are very hard dynamics to track and address, but we'll talk about Farmer in another class.

Another major development that Galtung brought to the field is the idea that there is more than one type of peace. There are two broad categories that are particularly relevant.

For Galtung, peace only emerges from deep social change. You can sign a ceasefire, but that doesn't mean that the underlying factors that lead to the war are going to be resolved. He wants to devise ways that reduce tensions, increase equality, share power and create the conditions for human flourishing.

The lack of overt violence is known as negative peace, with negative meaning absence. Positive peace, on the other hand, refers to the presence of factors that counter all three forms of violence. The theory goes that, if you build positive peace, then you'll eliminate the need for conflict again in the future.

Our professor says that Canada is an example of negative peace. There's no mass direct violence directed against groups or minorities, but there's a long way to go before there's true positive peace here. Some of the students debate this.

You can look at positive and negative peace in the context of a given conflict, or you can look at it in terms of the total amount of structural or cultural violence that affect people's ability to meet their basic needs and live full lives. If a society's structure is set up with inequalities and oppressions (even if minor), it creates a conflict that sometimes has the losing side accept their "inferiority," or it can prompt them to resist in different ways. It might be on the level of a cultural rather than armed conflict, but Galtung thinks that resistance will happen eventually.

Positive peace, you could say, is Galtung's vision of a total social project. And much peace theory comes out of a desire to reach precisely this.

Galtung apparently loves triangles, and there's another one we take a look at. This one is known as the ABC triangle.

The top point here is B, standing for behaviour. This, like direct violence, comes down to observable actions people take. A and C, the bottom points, stand for attitudes and context (in an older version it was called contradictions). Attitudes that underlie behaviour often include prejudices, beliefs, perceptions or narratives. The context here refers to the nuances of a given situation.

Like with the first pyramid, looking just at the top/visible point will only get you so far. You have to take into account more subtle factors if you want a deeper understanding of the conflict (and thus create solutions that address its actual roots).

So if we return to the Niger Delta example, the behaviour would be the organized resistance of the people to Shell's actions. Divorced from attitudes and context, it might be easily to misunderstand (or easier to misrepresent) their resistance. Our professor suggests that the context involved is the historical marginalization of the people living in the Delta, their peripherality when it comes to state power or their inability to go through official channels to protect themselves from getting sick. The conflict looks much different when you take this into account.

This, she says, is what she appreciates about Galtung – he doesn't settle for simplistic models. Conflict (and violence) are more than what's obvious or measurable at first glance. And our inability to engage with these subtle factors might make it harder to create solutions that stick. With the Delta, a solution that doesn't take into account the needs of the people resisting Shell would only kick the can down the road.

The point here is to bring clarity to complicated conflicts. The term raising a conflict means making underlying conflict dynamics more visible. This means resisting an easy resolution that would only meet one side's (usually the more powerful one's) needs. The BLM movement, our professor suggests, used the protests to raise conflicts orbiting systemic racism and make them more visible. The opposite is known as obscuring a conflict: making important dynamics invisible, or presenting a conflict as simpler than it actually is (usually in service of one side). This isn't always intentional. Instances of looting and crime during the protests, especially in Portland, had the effect of obscuring issues of structural racism by creating the ongoing debate of whether or not BLM is inherently violent or not. Lots of discourse focuses on the issue of violence than on the issue of racism and what to do about it.

Media outlets are major tools for raising or obscuring conflicts. But usually things get obscured more than raised, she says. Different sides promote their narratives, making it hard to find out what's actually happening on the ground. This, arguably, can be a form of cultural violence.