Johan Galtung, the Father of Peace Studies

Galtung, Johan; Fischer, Dietrich

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-32481-9_1

Cited by 92 publications

(155 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…For instance, Brock- Utne & Garbo (2009: 3) warn that the increasing tendency in peace research to apply broader concepts of security may provide an inadvertent excuse for militarization. Johan Galtung (2009), now increasingly critical of his intellectual child, has suggested that PRIO ('an old age home from the 1950s') is becoming an arm of the Norwegian Foreign Ministry and should change its name to something like the Norwegian Institute for Security Research. Jørgen Johansen (2003), at that time coordinator of the peace studies program at the University of Tromsø, charged that peace research in the Nordic countries had degenerated into violence research.…”

Section: Just the Study Of War?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Peace research – Just the study of war?

Gleditsch

Nordkvelle

Strand

2014

Journal of Peace Research

172

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The concept of peace has been under discussion in peace research from its start over 50 years ago. This article reviews the debate on broader and narrower conceptions of peace and investigates empirical patterns in the first 49 volumes of Journal of Peace Research, with some comparisons with Journal of Conflict Resolution. Negative peace, in the sense of reducing war, was the main focus in peace research from the inception. But positive peace, in the sense of cooperation or integration, has also always been on the peace research agenda, as reflected in the contents of both journals. Over time, a larger share of the articles in JPR has 'violence' or related terms in the title, while the incidence of the word 'peace' is fairly stable. Furthermore, articles on peace generally have fewer citations than those with violence-related terms. A broad concept of peace, as encouraged by the definition of positive peace as the reversal of structural violence, was popular in peace research for a decade or so, but has largely evaporated. To some extent, peace research has returned to its original agenda, although the main attention has shifted from interstate war to civil war and to some extent to one-sided and non-state violence. Articles dealing with patterns of cooperation, the traditional meaning of positive peace, now tend to address the liberal agenda and ask how they can foster a reduced probability of violence. Despite the 'gender gap', the increasing share of female authors in the journal appears to have had little influence on these developments although it may well have had other effects.

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Section: Just the Study Of War?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Peace research – Just the study of war?

Gleditsch

Nordkvelle

Strand

2014

Journal of Peace Research

172

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“…In part, peace research was founded in protest against the nuclear arms race and the dominant position of realist thinking in international relations. Galtung (1964Galtung ( , 1967 had written that the twentieth century was the bloodiest in human history and that the world was moving in the direction of more conflict. There was widespread fear that human civilization might not survive to see the new millennium.…”

Section: The Waning Of Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Life in Peace Research

Gleditsch¹

2015

SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice

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Graphs speak louder than words. A first version of the curve showing the decline in battle-related deaths (combatants as well as civilians) after World War II was first published in Lacina/Gleditsch (2005), based on the PRIO Battle Deaths Dataset generated by Bethany Lacina. It has been reproduced in numerous shapes and forms since then. This updated version shows the UCDP battle deaths data and the PRIO data in two separate time series. The Uppsala criteria for inclusion are slightly stricter, but the two series are roughly parallel for the 20 years that they overlap. No best estimate has yet been fixed for the casualties in Syria in 2013, so a high and a low estimate are given instead. This graph was created by Ida Rudolfsen for Gleditsch et al. (2015). The on-line appendix to that article includes a similar graph corrected for population size (i.e. depicting the probability of being killed in battle); it shows an even stronger decline of violence Chapter 1 A Life in Peace ResearchNon, rien de rien. Non, je ne regrette rien.* My personal life has been influenced by war in several ways. During the Spanish Civil War, my parents were active in the solidarity movement for the Republic and under the auspices of the Norwegian Committee for Spain they helped to support a hospital in Alcoy and a children's orphanage in Oliva. Although their efforts didn't succeed in saving the Republic, it had the inadvertent happy consequence of adding a little Spanish girl to our family-so when I was born, I had a lovely older sister. During the German invasion of Norway in April 1940, my parents were recruited to the transport of the gold reserves of the Norwegian Central Bank to safekeeping outside Norway, an operation led by my uncle. As a result, my parents ended up in England for the duration of the war. I was born in the London area in the summer of 1942 and spent some early years in the company of incoming V1s and V2s. Back in occupied Norway, two of my close relatives were tortured for their participation in resistance activity and a third was shot during the emergency in Trondheim when I was close to three months old (Berg 2007). Obviously, I don't remember any of this, so it would be an exaggeration to claim that experiencing war in my formative years influenced my choice of profession. My parents' political attitudes and activities were obviously more influential in leading me to join the peace movement and the labour movement.

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“…Johan Galtung (1990) introduced in his article "Violence, Peace, and Peace Research" the term "structural violence". This type of violence refers to social structure or social institution that can harm people by preventing them from meeting of their needs.…”

Section: Neglectmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cultural violence makes direct and structural violence look even feel right or at least not wrong" asserts Johan Galtung (1990). As in political science where are two important issues: the use of power and the legitimation of the use of power, also, violence studies are about two issues: the use of violence and the legitimation of that use.…”

Section: Triangle Of Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

Violence and Communication

Novák-Marcinčin

Gîfu

Teodorescu

2014

ILSHS

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The study sets to catagrafy the "violence" phenomenon in actual human society. The diversity of violence types, the education segments, the age segments who aggress and who are aggressed, get more and more extended. The social context is crucial for both the performance and understanding of violence. The term 'senseless violence' is often heard in cases where a serious violent incident was apparently unprovoked or has emerged from "insignificant" insults or altercation. The notion of "senseless" violence is, by implication, contrasted to some other 'reasonable' kind, or perhaps suggests that what we find repugnant needs to be placed beyond the bound of sense. Most people probably have a wordless conception of what is a reasonable response to offence or provocation, for example, a fatal shooting following an altercation over a parking place appears inexplicable and senseless. Still many acts of extreme violence occur in response to apparently minor incidents and violence nearly always has "sense", that is, social meaning, to both perpetrators and victims. The targets of violence are rarely chosen randomly and the victims and perpetrators are frequently already known to each other. In some cases the attribution "senseless" refers to an assumed mental illness or other pathology that might account for otherwise incomprehensible behavior. Human society registered besides direct violence: war, murder, rape, assault, verbal attacks, that is the kind that we physically perceive, another two invisible forms and can't be eliminated without eliminating them, cultural violence and structural violence. Direct violence has its roots in cultural and structural violence; then it feeds back and strengthens them. All three forms interact as a triad. Direct violence reinforces structural and cultural violence. We are trapped in a vicious cycle that is now threatening to destroy life on earth.

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Johan Galtung, the Father of Peace Studies

Cited by 92 publications

References 6 publications

Peace research – Just the study of war?

Peace research – Just the study of war?

A Life in Peace Research

Violence and Communication

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