CPDS 5331: Development Studies

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Tribhuvan UniversityDepartment of Conflict, Peace and

Development Studies

CPDS 5331: Development Studies

Seminar Facilitation by Khyam Bishwokarma

Development and Peacebuilding Nexus: Galtung’s Positive Peace Theory

(3rd Seminar : 27 January 2014)

Galtung’s Positive Peace Theory

Negative Peace Vs Positive Peace

•The idea of peace as the absence of organized collective violence… is negative Peace.

• The peace as a “synonym for all other good things in the world community, particularly, cooperation and integration between human groups … is positive peace”

• Peace is something more than just absence of organized group violence, peace also contains an element of equality of absence of exploitation.

• Negative Peace is compatible with structural violence


Attaining Positive Peace is to build positive relations such as:

• Presence of cooperation• Freedom from Fear•Freedom from want• Economic growth and development• Absence of exploitation• Equality• Justice• Freedom of action• Pluralism• Dynamism


Attaining Positive Peace is to build positive relations such as:

Presence of Cooperation: Interdependence between nations

Freedom from Fear: a state of affairs which allow nation/individual to predict about possible negative event in the future

Freedom from Want: Primary needs such as hunger, thirst, shelter, basic security should not remained unsatisfied

Economic Growth and Development: increase of resources per capita and equal distribution of resources; not only technological but social development


Absence of Exploitation: Value exchange between individuals/nations in equal terms; none takes more from other

Equality: Each individuals/nations has same essential value. Extreme gaps in opportunities and resources at the disposal of individuals or of nations should not be tolerated

Justice: equality in terms of fundamental rights

Freedom Action: all individuals/nations should have a wide range of possible action open to them Pluralism: socio-cultural diversity/co-existence

Dynamism: change or conditions for a change are built into the structure


Absence of Exploitation: Value exchange between individuals/nations in equal terms; none takes more from other

Equality: Each individuals/nations has same essential value. Extreme gaps in opportunities and resources at the disposal of individuals or of nations should not be tolerated

Justice: equality in terms of fundamental rights

Freedom Action: all individuals/nations should have a wide range of possible action open to them Pluralism: socio-cultural diversity/co-existence

Dynamism: change or conditions for a change are built into the structure (Galtung, 1967)


Peace = (well being + freedom + identity for human basic maintenance + Eco-balance corresponds to survival)

(Galtung,1996)

Positive Peace based on broad understanding of social conditions means the removal of structural violence beyond the absence of direct violence (Jeong, 2000)

It is a very narrow concept to look peace just as opposite to war. Violence, like side-effect in the health has interconnection with other violence.

Peace should guarantee positive human conditions


Interconnection of Violence

Important interconnections among types of violence are left out, particularly the way in which one type of violence may be reduced or controlled at the expense of increase or maintenance of other

StructuralDirect

Cultural

Violence

Galtung’s Positive Peace TheoryDirect Violence-A clear subject-action-object relationships are established- personal, visible, manifest and non-structural. It is carried over time by traumas left behind by its effects of harming the body, mind and spirit

StructuralDirect

Cultural

Violence

Violence Survival Needs Well-being Needs Identity Needs Freedom Needs

Direct Violence

Killing Maiming, siege sanctions, misery

De-socialization, Re-socialization, Secondary Citizen

Repression, Detention, Expulsion


Structural Violence-Those factors, such as poverty, repression, social alienation, that create inequality and thus have an indirect but insidious impact are structural violence- It is typically built into the very structure of society and cultural institutions

StructuralDirect

Cultural

Violence

Violence Survival Needs Well-being Needs Identity Needs Freedom Needs

Structural Violence

Exploitation A (Strong):starve

Exploitation B (Weak):malnutrition

Penetration Segmentation

Marginalization Fragmentation


Cultural Violence-Those aspect of culture –not entire culture –such as ‘the symbolic sphere of our existence of our existence –exemplified by religion and ideology, language and art empirical science and formal science –that can be used to justify or legitimize direct or structural violence –are cultural violence-Cultural violence works in two ways: 1. By changing the moral color of an act (murder on behalf

of the country as right, on behalf of oneself is wrong)2. By making reality opaque, so that we do not see the

violent act or fact, or at least not as violent (Galtung, 1997: 197)


Violence Triangle

StructuralDirect

Violence

Cultural

Cultural violence is the legitimizer of both

StructuralCultural

Violence

Direct

Structural and Cultural sources to direct violence


Violence Triangle

Direct violence is an event; structural violence is a process with ups and wons; cultural violence is an invariant, a ‘permanent’ remaining essentially the same for long periods, given the slow transformations of basic culture…the three forms of violence enter time differently, somewhat like the difference in earthquake theory between the earthquake as an event, the movement of the tectonic plates as a process, and the fault line as a more permanent condition (Galtung 1997: 199)


Violence Strata

Three layers of strata: at the bottom is the cultural violence that provides nutrients to others two; next stratum is structural violence where exploitation build up with the protective accompaniment of penetration-segmentation preventing consciousness-formation; at the top is the direct violence visible to the unguided eye and to barefoot empiricism.

Cultural violenceStructural ViolenceDirect Violence


Interrelationship of violence-super-types: From cultural Side

•There is a casual flow from cultural via structural to direct violence.•The culture preaches, teaches, admonishes, eggs on, and dulls us into seeing exploitation and/or repression as normal and natural, or into not seeing them…at all.•Direct violence as a form of uprising (blue collar crime by the underdog) or using existing power (white collar crime by the topdog) erupts either to challenge or to keep intact the structural iron-cage•Violence breeds violence


Africans are captured, forced across the Atlantic to work as slaves, millions are killed in the process –in Africa, on board, in the Americas. The massive direct violence over centuries seeps down and sediments as massive structural violence with whites as the master topdogs and blas as the slave underdogs, producing and reproducing massive cultural violence with racist ideas everywhere. After some time, irect violence is forgottoen, slavery is forgotten, and only two labels show up, pale enough for college textbooks: ‘discrimination’ for massive structural violence and ‘prejudice’ for massive cultural violence. Sanitation of language: itself cultural violence (Galtung 1997: 200)

Interrelationship of violence-super-types: From cultural Side


Social differentiation slowly takes on vertical characteristics with increasingly unequal exchange and these facts would then be in search of social acts for their maintenance, and cultural violence for their justification -to generate ‘materialist’ Marxist theory.

Interrelationship of violence-super-types: From Structural Violence Side


The triangular syndrome of violence should be contrasted in the mind with a triangular syndrome of peace in which cultural peace engenders structural peace, with symbiotic equitable relations among diverse partners and direct peace with acts of cooperation, friendliness, and love. It could be a virtuous rather than vicious triangle, also self-reinforcing. This virtuous triangle would be obtained by working on all three corners at the same time, not assuming that basic change in one will automatically lead to changes in the other two (Galtung, 1992:208)

To attain peace in a real sense therefore:

Galtung’s Positive Peace Theory: Criticism

- In terms of power structure of the world and human nature, it is unrealistic, and meaningless to equate peace with social justice

- A narrow focus on the control of symptoms of violence has a more tangible effect then struggle for improving the quality of life.

- It might divert attention away from problems of disarmament towards ‘a grand vague study of world development (Boulding 1998)

- Time consuming and pain-staking

Thank You

CPDS 5331: Development Studies

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