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Article 79 from 110
:: Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization
Creating peace obviously has to do with reducing violence (cure) and avoiding violence (prevention). And violence means harming and/or hurting. By Prof. Dr. Johan Galtung
The Direct-Structural-Cultural Violence Triangle
Creating peace obviously has to do with reducing violence (cure) and avoiding violence (prevention). And violence means harming and/or hurting. We then assume the existence of something that can experience being harmed and being hurt, and follow the Buddhist tradition in identifying that something with life. Life is capable of suffering (dukkha) violence done to the body and to the mind, referred to as physical and mental violence respectively. But life is also capable of experiencing bliss (sukha), the pleasure that comes to the body and the mind. Some might reserve the term ‘positive peace’ for that experience.1
So far we have looked at violence from the perspective of the receiver. If there is a sender, an actor who intends these consequences of violence, then we may talk about direct violence; if not, about indirect or structural violence.2 Misery is one form of suffering, hence there is violence somewhere. The position taken here is that indirect violence = structural violence. Indirect violence comes from the social structure itself between humans, between sets of humans (societies), between sets of societies (alliances, regions) in the world. And inside human beings there is the indirect, no intended, inner violence that comes out of the personality structure.
The two major forms of outer structural violence are well known from politics and economics; repression and exploitation. Both work on body and mind, but are not necessarily intended. For the victim, however, that offers scant comfort.
Behind all of this is cultural violence: all of it symbolic, in religion and ideology, in language and art, in science and law, in media and education. The function is simple enough: to legitimize direct and structural violence. In fact we are dealing with violence in culture, in politics and in economics, and then with direct violence. We need a concept broader than violence, and also broader than peace. Power is that concept. Cultural power moves actors by persuading them what is right and wrong: economic power by the carrot method of quid pro quo; military (or ‘force’ in general) power by the stick method of ‘or else’; and political power by producing decisions.
That gives us four types of power, or discourses: cultural, economic, military, and political. Well-known words, but not merely to be tossed around. They stand for four realms of power and four types of violence (structural violence has political and economic faces), and by implication for four types of peace. Before we turn to the question of what they look like concretely, some words about the relations between the four realms of power.
They all impact on each other; twelve arrows can be drawn. But, however true, that is the easy way out, because no stand is taken. Another truth should be added. There is also a general thrust in the power system: single acts of direct violence come out of structures of political decisions and economic transactions; and the latter cause each other. But underneath it all lurks culture; legitimizing some structures and acts, delegitimizing others.
The ‘realist’ assumption that only military power counts is the least realistic of all. However, the liberal faith in the right political structure and the Marxist faith in the right economic structure are not better. They all matter, particularly culture. But single-minded culturalism is also insufficient. My own position is an eclectic one, but with the causal flow more in the direction from culture via politics and economics to the military than vice versa. Thus, the major causal direction for violence is from cultural via structural to direct violence. [...]
The Economic Dimension
The problem here is not only economic practice, but also economic theory with its carefully nursed neglect of the side-effects of economic activity, the externalities. Some of them are positive, like the challenge derived from taking on complex problems for which there are no immediate, routine solutions. And some of them are negative, like ecological degradation, not to mention human degradation. They are not reflected in economic theory, or at most as side- and after-thoughts. Economists focus on quantities and prices of products, goods, and services offered on the market without reflecting whether they might also be bads and disservices.
Such variables are referred to as internalities, internal to the paradigm. One example is ”terms of exchange,” the quantity of one product needed to get in exchange a constant quantity of another product, like how much oil for one tractor. Another approach would be to compare the working hours needed.
Exploitation means that one party gets much more out of a deal than the other measured by the sum of internalities and externalities. The terms of exchange may be bad and getting worse: in addition one party gets all the challenge, leaving the routine work to the other, who also gets ecological and human degradation in the bargain. As this is a fairly adequate description of the trade between rich (not all in the North) and poor (not all in the South) countries in the world today, we are dealing with a key case of structural violence. This condition often leads to direct violence intended tochange or to maintain the structure, and is solidly protected by the cultural violence provided by mainstream theory. A heavy triangle of violence.
One way out is to trade less, relying more on one’s own resources (factors). This means that the positive externalities stay at home; the negative externalities will be suffered by oneself rather than inflicting them upon others. The hope is that Self-interest may lead to better types of economic activity. If this is Self-reliance I then Self-reliance II extends this to include exchange with other countries, but then with sensitivity to externalities. The short formula is to share them. What this means in practice is to give each other positive externalities, and to cooperate in reducing the negative ones.3
At this point a Catch-22 problem arises. Considerateness, taking the effects of international economic transactions on others (at least) as seriously as the effects on oneself, would generally presuppose some kind of closeness, a feeling of kinship. This is what good family relations are supposed to be about. One formula may be ‘neighboring countries’, another ‘like-minded countries,’ still another ‘countries at the same level of development’. Self-reliance II is supposed to develop such affinities – yet those affinities are at the same time the very condition for their coming into being.
All the same, the best approach is simply to get started. The Nordic countries, the ASEAN countries and the European Union countries did just that. This is probably also the best, perhaps even the only, way for developing/poor countries in the South to develop lifting not only themselves but also each other up with shared bootstraps. In that perspective South-South cooperation as advocated by the Nyerere Commission is a policy not only for development, but also for peace, at least within the South.4
References
1) One reason why that is not being done here is the effort to see peace more as a floor than a ceiling concept, something that very many can agree on. The more peace is specified, the richer the definition, the less consensus.
2) In other words, the structure is the medium through which the violence is transmitted, similar to the ‘field’ for gravity, electricity and magnetism in physics. Colonialism may serve as an example: there was an original input of mega-violence which was used to build the structure known as colonialism, still to a large extent operational after formal decolonization.
3) If A demands a product from B that challenges and stimulates B then B should, in return, demand an equally stimulating product from A, not simply a run-of-the-mill (literally speaking) product. And if one or both oft these processes leads to ecological and/or human degradation, then A and B should cooperate in reducing these consequences wherever they appear.
4) See The South Commission Report (Geneva: South Center, 1990).
Creating peace obviously has to do with reducing violence (cure) and avoiding violence (prevention). And violence means harming and/or hurting. We then assume the existence of something that can experience being harmed and being hurt, and follow the Buddhist tradition in identifying that something with life. Life is capable of suffering (dukkha) violence done to the body and to the mind, referred to as physical and mental violence respectively. But life is also capable of experiencing bliss (sukha), the pleasure that comes to the body and the mind. Some might reserve the term ‘positive peace’ for that experience.1
So far we have looked at violence from the perspective of the receiver. If there is a sender, an actor who intends these consequences of violence, then we may talk about direct violence; if not, about indirect or structural violence.2 Misery is one form of suffering, hence there is violence somewhere. The position taken here is that indirect violence = structural violence. Indirect violence comes from the social structure itself between humans, between sets of humans (societies), between sets of societies (alliances, regions) in the world. And inside human beings there is the indirect, no intended, inner violence that comes out of the personality structure.
The two major forms of outer structural violence are well known from politics and economics; repression and exploitation. Both work on body and mind, but are not necessarily intended. For the victim, however, that offers scant comfort.
Behind all of this is cultural violence: all of it symbolic, in religion and ideology, in language and art, in science and law, in media and education. The function is simple enough: to legitimize direct and structural violence. In fact we are dealing with violence in culture, in politics and in economics, and then with direct violence. We need a concept broader than violence, and also broader than peace. Power is that concept. Cultural power moves actors by persuading them what is right and wrong: economic power by the carrot method of quid pro quo; military (or ‘force’ in general) power by the stick method of ‘or else’; and political power by producing decisions.
That gives us four types of power, or discourses: cultural, economic, military, and political. Well-known words, but not merely to be tossed around. They stand for four realms of power and four types of violence (structural violence has political and economic faces), and by implication for four types of peace. Before we turn to the question of what they look like concretely, some words about the relations between the four realms of power.
They all impact on each other; twelve arrows can be drawn. But, however true, that is the easy way out, because no stand is taken. Another truth should be added. There is also a general thrust in the power system: single acts of direct violence come out of structures of political decisions and economic transactions; and the latter cause each other. But underneath it all lurks culture; legitimizing some structures and acts, delegitimizing others.
The ‘realist’ assumption that only military power counts is the least realistic of all. However, the liberal faith in the right political structure and the Marxist faith in the right economic structure are not better. They all matter, particularly culture. But single-minded culturalism is also insufficient. My own position is an eclectic one, but with the causal flow more in the direction from culture via politics and economics to the military than vice versa. Thus, the major causal direction for violence is from cultural via structural to direct violence. [...]
The Economic Dimension
The problem here is not only economic practice, but also economic theory with its carefully nursed neglect of the side-effects of economic activity, the externalities. Some of them are positive, like the challenge derived from taking on complex problems for which there are no immediate, routine solutions. And some of them are negative, like ecological degradation, not to mention human degradation. They are not reflected in economic theory, or at most as side- and after-thoughts. Economists focus on quantities and prices of products, goods, and services offered on the market without reflecting whether they might also be bads and disservices.
Such variables are referred to as internalities, internal to the paradigm. One example is ”terms of exchange,” the quantity of one product needed to get in exchange a constant quantity of another product, like how much oil for one tractor. Another approach would be to compare the working hours needed.
Exploitation means that one party gets much more out of a deal than the other measured by the sum of internalities and externalities. The terms of exchange may be bad and getting worse: in addition one party gets all the challenge, leaving the routine work to the other, who also gets ecological and human degradation in the bargain. As this is a fairly adequate description of the trade between rich (not all in the North) and poor (not all in the South) countries in the world today, we are dealing with a key case of structural violence. This condition often leads to direct violence intended tochange or to maintain the structure, and is solidly protected by the cultural violence provided by mainstream theory. A heavy triangle of violence.
One way out is to trade less, relying more on one’s own resources (factors). This means that the positive externalities stay at home; the negative externalities will be suffered by oneself rather than inflicting them upon others. The hope is that Self-interest may lead to better types of economic activity. If this is Self-reliance I then Self-reliance II extends this to include exchange with other countries, but then with sensitivity to externalities. The short formula is to share them. What this means in practice is to give each other positive externalities, and to cooperate in reducing the negative ones.3
At this point a Catch-22 problem arises. Considerateness, taking the effects of international economic transactions on others (at least) as seriously as the effects on oneself, would generally presuppose some kind of closeness, a feeling of kinship. This is what good family relations are supposed to be about. One formula may be ‘neighboring countries’, another ‘like-minded countries,’ still another ‘countries at the same level of development’. Self-reliance II is supposed to develop such affinities – yet those affinities are at the same time the very condition for their coming into being.
All the same, the best approach is simply to get started. The Nordic countries, the ASEAN countries and the European Union countries did just that. This is probably also the best, perhaps even the only, way for developing/poor countries in the South to develop lifting not only themselves but also each other up with shared bootstraps. In that perspective South-South cooperation as advocated by the Nyerere Commission is a policy not only for development, but also for peace, at least within the South.4
References
1) One reason why that is not being done here is the effort to see peace more as a floor than a ceiling concept, something that very many can agree on. The more peace is specified, the richer the definition, the less consensus.
2) In other words, the structure is the medium through which the violence is transmitted, similar to the ‘field’ for gravity, electricity and magnetism in physics. Colonialism may serve as an example: there was an original input of mega-violence which was used to build the structure known as colonialism, still to a large extent operational after formal decolonization.
3) If A demands a product from B that challenges and stimulates B then B should, in return, demand an equally stimulating product from A, not simply a run-of-the-mill (literally speaking) product. And if one or both oft these processes leads to ecological and/or human degradation, then A and B should cooperate in reducing these consequences wherever they appear.
4) See The South Commission Report (Geneva: South Center, 1990).
Source:
Prof. Dr. Johan Galtung 2007
Prof.Dr. Johann Galtung is political scientiest and peace researcher. He is founder and director of the international TRANSCEND-network for peace and development Galtung invented the ‘transcend-method’ and received the Alternative Nobel Prize in 1987.
Prof. Dr. Johan Galtung 2007
Prof.Dr. Johann Galtung is political scientiest and peace researcher. He is founder and director of the international TRANSCEND-network for peace and development Galtung invented the ‘transcend-method’ and received the Alternative Nobel Prize in 1987.
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Article 79 from 110
