VIOLENCE, PEACE, AND PEACE RESEARCH*

By

JOHAN GALTUNGInternational Peace Research Institute, Oslo

1. IntroductionIn the present paper we shall be using theword ’peace’ very many times. Few wordsare so often used and abused - perhaps, itseems, because ’peace’ serves as a meansof obtaining verbal consensus-it is hard tobe all-out against peace.’ Thus, when ef-forts are made to plead almost any kind ofpolicy - say technical assistance, increasedtrade, tourism, new forms of education, ir-rigation, industrialization, etc. - then it isoften asserted that that policy, in additionto other merits, will also serve the cause ofpeace. This is done regardless of howtenuous the relation has been in the pastor how dubious the theory justifying thisas a reasonable expectation for the future.Such difficulties are avoided by excludingany reference to data from the past or totheories about the future.

This practice is not necessarily harm-ful. The use of the term ’peace’ mayin itself be peace-productive, produc-ing a common basis, a feeling of com-munality in purpose that may pave theground for deeper ties later on. The useof more precise terms drawn from thevocabulary of one conflict group, andexcluded from the vocabulary of the

opponent group, may in itself cause

dissent and lead to manifest conflict

precisely because the term is so clear-

ly understood. By projecting an image ofharmony of interests the term ’peace’may also help bring about such a har-mony. It provides opponents with a

one-word language in which to express

values of concern and togetherness be-cause peace is on anybody’s agenda.2One may object that frequent use of

the word ’peace’ gives an unrealistic

image of the world. Expressions like

’violence’, ’strife’, ’exploitation’ or at

least ’conflict’, ’revolution’ and war

should gain much higher frequency tomirror semantically a basically non-har-monious world. But leaving this majorargument aside for the moment, it is ob-vious that some level of precision is nec-essary for the term to serve as a cognitivetool. At this point, of course, nobody hasany monopoly on defining ’peace’. Butthose who use the term frequently in aresearch context, as peace researchers

(will do) do, will at least have gained someexperience when it comes to definitionsthat should be avoided for one reason oranother.To discuss the idea of peace we shall

start from three simple principles:

1. The term ’peace’ shall be used for social

goals at least verbally agreed to by many, ifnot necessarily by most.

2. These social goals may be complex and diffi-cult, but not impossible, to attain.

3. The statement peace is absence of violenceshall be retained as valid.

The third principle is not a definition,since it is a clear case of obscurum perobscurius. What we intend is only that

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the terms ’peace’ and ’violence’ be linkedto each other such that ’peace’ can beregarded as ’absence of violence’. Thereasons at this early point in our seman-tical excursion, are twofold: the state-

ment is simple and in agreement withcommon usage, and defines a peacefulsocial order not as a point but as region -as the vast region of social orders fromwhich violence is absent. Within this re-

gion a tremendous amount of variation isstill possible, making an orientation infavor of peace compatible with a numberof ideologies outlining other aspects ofsocial orders.

Everything now hinges on making adefinition of ’violence’. This is a highlyunenviable task, and the suggestions willhardly be satisfactory to many readers.However, it is not so important to arriveat anything like the definition, or the

typology - for there are obviously manytypes of violence. More important is to in-dicate theoretically significant dimensionsof violence that can lead thinking, re-

search and, potentially, action, towardsthe most important problems. If peaceaction is to be regarded highly because itis action against violence, then the con-cept of violence must be broad enough toinclude the most significant varieties, yetspecific enough to serve as a basis forconcrete action.

Thus, the definition of ’peace’ becomesa major part of a scientific strategy.It may depart from common usage bynot being agreed to ’by most’ (consensusnot required), yet should not be entirelysubjectivistic (’agreed to by many’). It

should depict a state of affairs the realiza-tion of which is not utopian (’not impos-sdile to obtain’), yet not on the imme-diate political agenda (’complex and

bifficult’). And it should immediatelysteer one’s attention towards problemsthat are on the political, intellectual, andscientific agenda of today, and to-

morrow.2

2. On the definition and dimensions of‘violence’

As a point of departure, let us say thatviolence is present when human beings arebeing influenced so that their actual soma-tic and mental realizations are belowtheir potential realizations. This statementmay lead to more problems than it solves.However, it will soon be clear why weare rejecting the narrow concept ofviolence - according to which violence issomatic incapacitation, or deprivation ofhealth, alone (with killing as the extremeform), at the hands of an actor who in-tends this to be the consequence. If thiswere all violence is about, and peace isseen as its negation, then too little is

rejected when peace is held up as anideal. Highly unacceptable social orderswould still be compatible with peace.Hence, an extended concept of violenceis indispensable but that concept shouldbe a logical extensicn, not merely a listof undesirables.The definition points to at least six im-

portant dimensions of violence. But firstsome remarks about the use of the keywords above, ’actual’ and ’potential’.Violence is here defined as the cause ofthe diff ‘erence between the potential andthe actual, between what could have beenand what is. Violence is that which in-creases the distance between the potentialand the actual, and that which impedesthe decrease of this distance. Thus, if aperson died from tuberculosis in the

eighteenth century it would be hard toconceive of this as violence since it mighthave been quite unavoidable, but if hedies from it today, despite all the medicalresources in the world, then violence is

present according to our definition. Cor-respondingly, the case of people dyingfrom earthquakes today would not war-rant an analysis in terms of violence,3 butthe day after tomorrow, when earth-

quakes may become avoidable, suchdeaths may be seen as the result of voi-

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lence. In other words, when the potentialis higher than the actual is by definitionavoidable and when it is avoidable, thenviolence is present.When the actual is unavoidable, then

violence is not present even if the actualis at a very low level. A life expectancy of

thirty years only, during the neolithic

period, was not an expression of violence,but the same life-expectancy today(whether due to wars, or social injustice,or both) would be seen as violence accor-ding to our definition.

Thus, the potential level of realization is thatwhich is possible with a given level of insightand resources. If insight and/or resources aremonopolized by a group or class or are used forother purposes, then the actual level falls belowthe potential level, and violence is present in thesystem. In addition to these types of indirect vio-lence there is also the direct violence wheremeans of realization are not withheld, but di-rectly destroyed. Thus, when a war is foughtthere is direct violence since killing or hurting aperson certainly puts his ’actual somatic reali-zation’ below his ’potential somatic realiza-tion’. But there is also indirect violence insofaras insight and resources are channelled awayfrom constructive efforts to bring the actualcloser to the potential.4 4

The meaning of ’potential realizations’is highly problematic, especially when wemove from somatic aspects of humanlife, where consensus is more readilyobtained5, to mental aspects. Our guidehere would probably often have to bewhether the value to be realized is fairlyconsensual or not, although this is by nomeans satisfactory. For example, literacyis held in high regard almost everywhere,whereas the value of being Christian ishighly controversial. Hence, we wouldtalk about violence if the level of literacyis lower than what it could have been,not if the level of Christianity is lowerthan what it could have been. We shallnot try to explore this difficult point fur-ther in this context, but turn to the di-mensions of violence.

To discuss them, it is useful to conceiveof violence in terms of influence, as in-dicated in the statement we used as a

point of departure above. A completeinfluence relation presupposes an influ-encer, an influencee, and a mode of influ-encing.6 In the case of persons, we canput it very simply: a subject, an object,and an action. But this conception ofviolence in terms of a complete inter-

personal influence relation will lead usastray by focussing on a very specialtype of violence only; also truncatedversions where either subject or objector both are absent are highly signifi-cant. To approach this we shall start

with two dimensions characterizing theviolent action itself, or the mode of in-fluence.The first distinction to be made is

between physical and psychological vio-lence. The distinction is trite but im-

portant mainly because the narrow con-cept of violence mentioned above concen-trates on physical violence only. Underphysical violence human beings are hurtsomatically, to the point of killing. Itis useful to distinguish further between’biological violence’, which reduces so-matic capability (below what is poten-tially possible), and ’physical violence assuch’, which increases the constraint onhuman movementS7 - as when a person is

imprisoned or put in chains, but also wh enaccess to transportation is very unevenlydistributed, keeping large segments of apopulation at the same place with mobi-lity a monopoly of the selected few. Butthat distinction is less important than thebasic distinction between violence thatworks on the body, and violence thatworks on the soul; where the latter wouldinclude lies, brainwashing, indoctrinationof various kinds, threats, etc. that serveto decrease mental potentialities. (Inci-dentally, it is interesting that such Eng-lish words as ’hurt’ and ’hit’ can be usedto express psychological as well as phys-

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ical violence: this doubleness is alreadybuilt into the language.)The second distinction is between the

negative and positive approach to influ-ence.8 Thus, a person can be influencednot only by punishing him when he doeswhat the influencer considers wrong, butalso by rewarding him when he doeswhat the influencer considers right. In-stead of increasing the constraints on hismovements the constraints may be de-creased instead of increased, and somaticcapabilities extended instead of reduced.This may be readily agreed to, but doesit have anything to do with violence? Yes,because the net result may still be thathuman beings are effectively preventedfrom realizing their potentialities. Thus,many contemporary thinkers9 emphasizethat the consumer’s society rewards am-ply he who goes in for consumption,while not positively punishing him whodoes not. The system is reward-oriented,based on promises of euphoria, but in sobeing also narrows down the ranges ofaction. It may be disputed whether thisis better or worse than a system thatlimits the range of action because of the

dysphoric consequences of staying out-side the permitted range. It is perhapsbetter in terms of giving pleasure ratherthan pain, worse in terms of being moremanipulatory, less overt. But the impor-tant point is, the awareness of the con-cept of violence can be extended in thisdirection, since it yields a much richerbasis for discussion.The third distinction to be made is on

the object side: whether or not there is

an object that is hurt. Can we talk aboutviolence when no physical or biologicalobject is hurt? This would be a case ofwhat is referred to above as truncated

violence, but nevertheless highly mean-ingful. When a person, a group, a nationis displaying the means of physical vio-lence, whether throwing stones around ortesting nuclear arms, there may not be vio-

lence in the sense that anyone is hit or

hurt, but there is nevertheless the threatof physical violence and indirect threat ofmental violence that may even be char-acterized as some type of psychologicalviolence since it constrains human action.

Indeed, this is also the intention: thefamous balance of power doctrine isbased on efforts to obtain precisely thiseffect. And correspondingly with psycho-logical violence that does not reach anyobject: a lie does not become more of atruth because nobody believes in the lie.Untruthfulness is violence according tothis kind of thinking under any condition,which does not mean that it cannot bethe least evil under some widely discussedcircumstances.

Is destruction of things violence?

Again, it would not be violence accord-

ing to the complete definition above, butpossibly some ’degenerate’ form. But inat least two senses it can be seen as psy-chological violence: the destruction of

things as a foreboding or threat of possi-ble destruction of persons,10 and the de-struction of things as destruction of

something very dear to persons referredto as consumers or owners)!

The fourth distinction to be made andthe most important one is on the subjectside: whether or not there is a subject(person) who acts. Again it may beasked: can we talk about violence when

nobody is committing direct violence, isacting? This would also be a case of whatis referred to above as truncated violence,but again highly meaningful. We shallrefer to the type of violence where thereis an actor that commits the violence as

personal or direct, and to violence wherethere is no such actor as structural orindirect.12 In both cases individuals maybe killed or mutilated, hit or hurt in bothsenses of these words, and manipulatedby means of stick or carrot strategies.But whereas in the first case these con-

sequences can be traced back to concrete

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persons as actors, in the second case thisis no longer meaningful. There may notbe any person who directly harms anotherperson in the structure. The violenceis built into the structure and shows upas unequal power and consequently as un-equal life chances.13

Resources are unevenly distributed, aswhen income distributions are heavilyskewed, literacy/education unevenly dis-tributed, medical services existent in somedistricts and for some groups only, and soon.14 Above all the power to decide overthe distribution of resources is unevenlydistributed.15 The situation is aggravatedfurther if the persons low on income arealso low in education, low on health, andlow on power - as is frequently the casebecause these rank dimensions tend to be

heavily correlated due to the way theyare tied together in the social structure.16Marxist criticism of capitalist societyemphasizes how the power to decide overthe surplus from the production processis reserved for the owners of the meansof production, who then can buy them-selves into top positions on all other rankdimensions because money is highly con-vertible in a capitalist society - if youhave money to convert, that is. Liberalcriticism of socialist society similarly em-phasizes how power to decide is mono-polized by a small group who convertpower in one field into power in anotherfield simply because the opposition can-not reach the stage of effective articula-tion.The important point here is that if peo-

ple are starving when this is objectivelyavoidable, then violence is committed,regardless of whether there is a clear

subject-action-object relation, as duringa siege yesterday or no such clear rela-tion, as in the way world economic rela-tions are organized today.17 We havebaptized the distinction in two differentways, using the word-pairs personal-structural and direct-indirect respectively.

Violence with a clear subject-object rela-tion is manifest because it is visible asaction. It corresponds to our ideas ofwhat drama is, and it is personal becausethere are persons committing the vio-lence. It is easily captured and expressedverbally since it has the same structureas elementary sentences in (at least Indo-European) languages: subject-verb-ob-ject, with both subject and object beingpersons. Violence without this relationis structural, built into structure. Thus,when one husband beats his wife thereis a clear case of personal violence, butwhen one million husbands keep onemillion wives in ignorance there is struc-tural violence. Correspondingly, in a

society where life expectancy is twice ashigh in the upper as in the lower classes,violence is exercised even if there are noconcrete actors one can point to directlyattacking others, as when one person killsanother.

In order not to overwork the wordviolence we shall sometimes refer to thecondition of structural violence as Social

injustice.18 The term ’exploitation’ willnot be used, for several reasons. First, itbelongs to a political vocabulary, andhas so many political and emotionalovertones that the use of this term will

hardly facilitate communication. Second,the term lends itself too easily to expres-sions involving the verb exploit, which inturn may lead attention away from thestructural as opposed to the personalnature of this phenomenon - and evenlead to often unfounded accusationsabout intended structural violence.19The fifth distinction to be made is

between violence that is intended or

unintended. This distinction is important twhen guilt is to be decided, since the

concept of guilt has been tied more tointention, both in Judaeo-Christian ethicsand in Roman jurisprudence, than to

consequence (whereas the present de-finition of violence is entirely located on

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the consequence side). This connectionis important because it brings into focusa bias present in so much thinking aboutviolence, peace, and related concepts:ethical systems directed against intendedviolence will easily fail to capture struc-tural violence in their nets - and mayhence be catching the small fry and let-ting the big fish loose. From this fallacyit does not follow, in our mind, that theopposite fallacy of directing all attentionagainst structural violence is elevatedinto wisdom. If the concern is with peace,and peace is absence of violence, thenaction should be directed against personalas well as structural violence; a pointto be developed below.

Sixth, there is the traditional dis-tinction between two levels of violence,the manifest and the latent.20 Manifest

violence, whether personal or structural,is observable; although not directly sincethe theoretical entity of ’potential real-ization’ also enters the picture. Latentviolence is something which is not there,yet might easily come about. Since vio-lence by definition is the cause of thedifference (or of maintaining the non-decrease) between actual and potentialrealization, increased violence may comeabout by increases in the potential as wellas by decreases in the actual levels.

However, we shall limit ourselves to thelatter and say that there is latent violencewhen the situation is so unstable that theactual realization level ’easily’ decreases.For personal violence this would meana situation where a little challenge wouldtrigger considerable killing and atrocity,as is often the case in connection withracial fights. In such cases we need a wayof expressing that the personal violenceis also there the day, hour, minute, sec-ond before the first bomb, shot, fist-fight,cry - and this is what the concept oflatent, personal violence does for us. It

indicates a situation of unstable equili-brium, where the level of actual realiza-

tion is not sufficiently protected againstdeterioriation by upholding mechanisms.

Similarly with structural violence: wecould imagine a relatively egalitarianstructure insufficiently protected againstsudden feudalization, against crystalli-zation into a much more stable, evenpetrified, hierarchical structure. A revo-lution brought about by means of a

highly hierarchical military organizationmay after a brilliant period of egalia-tarianism, and after major challenge,revert to a hierarchical structure. One

way of avoiding this, of course, is to

avoid hierarchical group struggle organi-zations in the first run, and use non-

violent nonhierarchical guerrilla organi-zations in the fight so as to let the meansbe a preview of the egalitarian goal.21That concludes our list of dimensions

of violence, although many more couldbe included. One question that imme-

diately arises is whether any combina-tions from these six dichotomies can beruled out a priori, but there seems to beno such case. Structural violence with-out objects is also meaningful; truncationof the complete violence relation can goso far as to eliminate both subjects andobjects. Personal violence is meaningfulas a threat, a demonstration even whennobody is hit, and structural violence isalso meaningful as a blueprint, as an

abstract form without social life, used tothreaten people into subordination: if

you do not behave, we shall have to

reintroduce all the disagreeable structureswe had before.

Disregarding the negative-positive dis-tinction as less important in this context,we end up, essentially, with the typologyillustrated in Figure 1.

If peace now is regarded as absence ofviolence, then thinking about peace (andconsequently peace research and peaceaction) will be structured the same wayas thinking about violence. And theviolence cake can evidently be cut a

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Figure 1. A Typology of Violence

number of ways. Tradition has been tothink about violence as personal violenceonly, with one important subdivision interms of ’violence vs. the threat of vio-lence’, another in terms of ’physical vs.psychological war’, still another (impor-tant in ethical and legal thinking)about ’intended vs. unintended’, and soon. The choice is here to make the dis-tinction between personal and structuralviolence the basic one; justification hasbeen presented (1) in terms of a unifyingperspective (the cause of the differencebetween potential and actual realization)and (2) by indicating that there is noreason to assume that structural violenceamounts to less suffering than personalviolence.On the other hand, it is not strange

that attention has been focussed moreon personal than on structural violence.Personal violence shmt’s.22 The object ofpersonal violence perceives the violence,usually, and may complain - the objectof structural violence may be persuadednot to perceive this at all. Personal vio-lence represents change and dynamism -not only ripples on waves, but waves onotherwise tranquil waters. Structural vio-lence is silent, it does not show - it is

essentially static, it is the tranquil waters.In a static society, personal violence willbe registered, whereas structural violencemay be seen as about as natural as theair around us. Conversely: in a highlydynamic society, personal violence maybe seen as wrong and harmful but stillsomehow congruent with the order of

things, whereas structural violence be-comes apparent because it stands out likean enormous rock in a creek, impedingthe free flow, creating all kinds of eddiesand turbulences. Thus, perhaps it is notso strange that the thinking about per-sonal violence (in the Judaeo-Christian-Roman tradition) took on much of itspresent form in what we today wouldregard as essentially static social orders,whereas thinking about structural vio-lence (in the Marxist tradition) was for-mulated in highly dynamic northwest-European societies.

In other words, we conceive of struc-tural violence as something that shows acertain stability, whereas personal vio-lence (e. g. as measured by the tolls causedby group conflict in general and war inparticular) shows tremendous fluctua-

tions over time. This is illustrated in Fig-ure 2.

Figure 2. Time and the Two Types of Violence

This is to a large extent tautological. Atype of violence built into the socialstructure should exhibit a certain stabi-

lity : social structures may perhaps some-times be changed over night, but theymay not very often be changed that

quickly. Personal violence, which to alarger extent is seen as subject to thewhims and wishes of individuals, shouldshow less stability. Hence personal vio-

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lence may more easily be noticed, eventhough the ’tranquil waters’ of structuralviolence may contain much more vio-lence. For this reason we would expect afocus or personal violence in after-warperiods lest they should become between-war periods; and if the periods protractssufficiently for the major outburst ofpersonal violence to be partly forgotten,we would expect a concentration onstructural violence, provided the societiesare dynamic enough to make any stabilitystand out as somehow unnatural.23

3. The means of personal and structuralviolence

To make this distinction less abstract, letus now explore how personal and struc-tural violence, are, in fact, carried out.Starting with personal violence, concen-tration on ’actual somatic realization’:how can it be reduced or kept low at thehands of somebody else? The question issimple, as are the answers since theysuggest an instrumental approach to theproblem of violence. There is a well-

specified task to be done, that of doingbodily harm unto others, and there arepersons available to do it. But this is a

production relation, suggesting a ’devel-opment’ much like in the economic sec-tor of society, with the introduction ofincreasingly refined tools and differentia-ted social organization - only that thetools in this case are referred to as weap-

ons or arms, and the organization is notcalled a workshop or a factory, but agang or an army.A typology of personal, physical vio-

lence can now be developed focussing onthe tools used, starting with the humanbody itself (in the elementary forms offist fights and the more advanced forms,such as Karate and Aikido), proceedingtowards all kinds of arms culminating,so far, with ABC weapons. Another

approach would use the form of organi-zation, starting with the lone individual,proceeding via mobs and crowds endingup with the organizations of modern

guerrilla or army warfare. These two

approaches are related: just as in econo-mic organizations the means and mode ofproduction (here direct bodily violence)depend on each other, and if one is lag-ging behind a conflict will arise. Togetherthese two approaches would yield the

history of military warfare as a specialcase, since much bodily violence is not

military. The approach would be cumu-lative for a weapon or technique, and aform of organization once developed maybecome obsolete but not erased; hencethis typology would not be systematic,but always open to record new devel-opments.A more systematic approach can be

obtained by looking at the target; thehuman being. He is relatively known ana-tomically (structurally) and physiologic-

Table 1. A Typology of Personal Somatic Violence

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ally (functionally), so typologies can bedeveloped on that basis. One primitivetypology might be as shown in Table l.

The basic distinction is not water-tight,but nevertheless useful: for one thing is totry to destroy the machine (the humanbody) itself, another to try to prevent themachine from functioning. The latter canbe done in two ways: denial of input(sources of energy in general, air, water,and food in the case of the body), anddenial of output (movement). The humanoutput can be somatic, recorded by theoutside as movement (with standstill asa limiting case) or mental not recordeddirectly from the outside (only by indi-cators in the form of movements, in-

cluding movements of vocal chords). Theborderline between physical and psycho-logical personal violence is not very clear,since it is possible to influence physicalmovements by means of psychologicaltechniques, and vice versa: physical con-straints certainly have mental implica-tions.

In Table I some of the techniques havebeen indicated in parenthesis. A noteshould be added here about explosions. Inprinciple they are of two kinds: to pro-pel some missile, and to work directly onhuman bodies. Explosions are much usedfor the latter purpose because they com-bine the anatomical methods: a standardbomb would combine I and 2; add some

shrapnel and 3 is also taken care of; addsome simple chemicals so as to make ita fire bomb and 4 is taken into account;some gases would include 5 and if in ad-dition the contraption is made nuclearthe crowning achievement, 6, is there -

presumably for ever, at least in principle,since it is difficult systematically to un-make an invention, it can only be sup-pressed. New weapons can always be in-vented, based on one or any combinationof the principles in the Table. But thereis also room for the more basic innova-tion : the introduction of a new principle.

Is it now possible to construct a corre-sponding typology for structural vio-lence ? If we accept that the general for-mula behind structural violence is inequa-lity, above all in the distribution of power,then this can be measured; and inequalityseems to have a high survival capacitydespite tremendous changes elsewhere.24But if inequality persists, then we mayask: which factors, apart from personalviolence and the threat of personal vio-lence, tend to uphold inequality? Obvi-ously, just as military science and relatedsubjects would be indispensable for theunderstanding of personal violence, sois the science of social structure, and

particularly of stratification, indispens-able for the understanding of structuralviolence.

This is not the occasion to developgeneral theories of social structure, butsome ideas are necessary to arrive at

some of the mechanisms. Most funda-mental are the ideas of actor, system,structure, rank and level. Actors seek

goals, and are organized in systems inthe sense that they interact with eachother. But two actors, e. g. two nations,can usually be seen as interacting inmore than one system; they not onlycooperate politically, e. g. by trading votesin the UN, but also economically bytrading goods, and culturally by tradingideas. The set of all such systems ofinteraction, for a given set of actors, canthen be referred to as a structure. Andin a structure an actor may have highrank in one system, low in the next, andthen high in the third one; or actors mayhave either consistently high ranks orconsistently low ranks.

However, if we look more closely atan actor, e. g. a nation, we shall very oftenbe able to see it as a structure in its own

right, but an integrated structure sinceit is able to appear as an actor. This’Chinese boxes’ view of actors is veryimportant, and leads to the concept of

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level of actors. There are three majorinterpretations :25

- in terms of territories: a nation can be seenas a set of districts, in turn seen as a set ofmunicipalities, and these are then seen as aset of individuals;

- in terms of organizations: a factory can oftenbe seen as an assembly line with sub-factoriesfeeding into the assembly-line with their pro-ducts, finally coming down to the individualworker.

- in terms of associations: they can often beseen as consisting of local chapters, endingup with individual members.

Thus, the image of the social order or dis-order can be presented as in Figure 3.

Figure 3. An Image of the Social Order

In all these systems there is interaction,and where there is interaction, value issomehow exchanged. It then makes verymuch sense to study what the value-dis-tribution is after the system has been op-erating for some time, and the grossdistinction has been made between egal-itarian and inegalitarian distributions.We can now mention six factors that

serve to maintain inegalitarian distribu-tions, and consequently can be seen asmechanisms of structural violence:

1. Linear ranking order - the ranking is com-plete, leaving no doubt as to who is higherin any pair of actors;

2. Acyclical interaction pattern - all actors areconnected, but only one way - there is onlyone ’correct’ path of interaction;

3. Correlation between rank and centrality - thehigher the rank of the actor in the system,the more central his position in the interac-tion network;

4. Congruence between the systems - the inter-action networks are structurally similar.

5. Concordance between the ranks - if an actoris high in one system then he also tends to behigh in another system where he participatesand

6. High rank coupling between levels - so thatthe actor at level n-1 are represented at leveln through the highest ranking actor at leveln-l.

The factors can best be understood byexamining to some extent their negation,starting with the last one.

Thus, imagine that a nation is domi-nated by an economic and cultural capi-tal, but has a much smaller politicalcapital through which most political in-teraction in the international system iscarried out. This would tend to distributethe power at the level of cities since the

coupling is not at the highest point.Similarly, we could imagine that the ma-jor road from the capital to a district didnot connect directly with the district

point of gravity but with some peripheralpoint; as when a government is represen-ted abroad not by the president or primeminister but by the foreign minister -or a sub-factory not by the managerbut by his deputy. But very often the topactor at level n-1 is made the represen-tative at level n - with a number of im-

plications.26Similarly, imagine there is consider-

able rank discordance, even to the pointwhere the summated rankings of theactors tend to be relatively equal. In thatcase, patterns of inequality would be lessconsistent and less reinforcing, and theamount of disequilibrium in the system

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would also tend to upset any stability.Moreover, if the systems are not congruentbut differ in structure, actors will not so

easily generalize interaction patterns butbe more flexible, less frozen into one wayof acting (for instance servility). And ifthe actor with highest rank did not nec-essarily have the most central positionin the network this would diminish his

power, which would also be diminish-ed if actors with lower ranks were to a lar-

ger extent permitted direct interaction

(not only interaction mediated throughthe actors with high rank). Finally: non-linear, pyramidal (also known as partial)ranking order permits more leeway, moreflexibility in the system.27Many propositions can now be devel-

oped about this, a basic one being thatsocial systems will have a tendency todevelop all six mechanisms unless delib-erately and persistently prevented fromdoing so. Thus the pattern is set for anaggravation of inequality, in some struc-tures so much so that the lowest-rankingactors are deprived not only relative tothe potential, but indeed below sub-

sistence minimum. Inequality then showsup in differential morbidity and mortalityrates, between individuals in a district,between districts in a nation, and be-tween nations in the international sys-tem - in a chain of interlocking feudalrelationships. They are deprived becausethe structure deprives them of chancesto organize and bring their power to bearagainst the topdogs, as voting power,bargaining power, striking power, vio-lent power - partly because they are

atomized and disintegrated, partly be-cause they are overawed by all the

authority the topdogs present.Thus, the net result may be bodily

harm in both cases, but structural viol-ence will probably just as often be recordedas psychological violence. Hence, highlydifferent means may lead to highly similarresults - a conclusion to be explored later.

4. The relation between personal andstructural violence

In this section some comments will beoffered on this relationship, followingthis outline:

1. Is there really a distinction between personaland structural violence at all?

2. If there is, does not one type of violence pre-suppose the manifest presence of the other?

3. If pure types exist, could it not neverthelessbe said that they have a pre-history of theother type?

4. If this is not generally the case, could it notbe that one type of violence presupposes thelatent presence of the other?

5. If this is not the case, could it not be thatone is the price we have to pay for the ab-sence of the other?

6. If this is not generally the case, could it notbe that one type is much more important inits consequences than the other?

Let us start with the first question.It may be argued that this distinction

is not clear at all: it disregards slightsof the structural element in personal viol-ence and the personal element in struc-tural violence. These important perspec-tives are regained if a person is seen asmaking his decision to act violently notonly on the basis of individual deliber-ations but (also) on the basis of expec-tations impinging on him as norms

contained in roles contained in statuses

through which he enacts his social self;and, if one sees a violent structure as

something that is a mere abstractionunless upheld by the actions, expectedfrom the social environment or not, ofindividuals. But then: does not this meanthat there is no real distinction at all?Cannot a person engaging in personalviolence always use expectations fromthe structure as an excuse, and does nota person upholding an exploitative socialstructure have responsibility for this?

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The distinction that nevertheless re-

mains is between violence that hits hu-man beings as a direct result of Figure 4type actions of others, and violence thathits them indirectly because repressivestructures (as analyzed in preceding sec-tion) are upheld by the summated andconcerted action of human beings. Thequalitative difference between these ac-tions is the answer. The question of guiltis certainly not a metaphysical question;guilt is as real as any other feeling, but aless interesting one. The question israther whether violence is structured insuch a way that it constitutes a direct,personal link between a subject and anobject, or an indirect structural one, nothow this link is perceived by the personsat either end of the violence channel. The

objective consequences, not the subjec-tive intentions are the primary concern.But are personal and structural vio-

lence empirically, not only logically, in-dependent of each other? Granted thatthere may be a corrrelation so that struc-tures richly endowed with structural vio-lence often may also display above aver-age incidence of personal violence, it is

possible to have them in pure forms, tohave one without the other? are therestructures where violence is person-invari-ant in the sense that structural violence

persists regardless of changes in persons?And conversely, are there persons whereviolence is structure-invariant in the sensethat personal violence persists regardlessof changes in structural context?The answer seems to be yes in either

case. The typical feudal structure, witha succession of incapsulating hierarchiesof metropole-satellite relationships is

clearly structurally violent regardless ofwho staffs it and regardless of the levelof awareness of the participants: theviolence is built into the structures. No

personal violence or threat of personalviolence are needed. And there are per-sons who seem to be violent in (almost)

any setting - often referred to as ’bullies’.Characteristic of them is precisely thatthey carry their violent propensity withthem far outside any structural contextdeemed reasonable by society at large,for which reason they will often be insti-tutionalized (in prison or mental hospi-tal, depending on which basic norms theyinfract first and most clearly). Hence, wemay conclude that the two forms ofviolence are empirically independent:the one does not presuppose the other.

But from this alone it cannot be con-cluded that there is no necessary (notonly sufficient) causal relationship be-tween the two types of violence, or thatthe even stronger condition of one-wayreductionism is not fulfilled. One mayargue that all cases of structural violencecan, by closer scrutiny, be traced back topersonal violence in their pre-history.An exploitative caste system or race

society would be seen as the consequenceof a large-scale invasion leaving a thin,but powerful top layer of the victoriousgroup after the noise of fighting is over.A bully would be seen as the inevitableproduct of socialization into a violentstructure: he is the rebel, systematicallyuntrained in other ways of coping withhis conflicts and frustrations because thestructure leaves him with no alternatives.That structural violence often breedsstructural violence, and personal vio-lence often breeds personal violence no-body would dispute - but the point herewould be the cross-breeding betweenthe two. In other words: pure cases are

only pure as long as the pre-history ofthe case or even the structural context are

conveniently forgotten.Far from denying that these may be

fruitful perspectives both for researchinto the past and the etiology of violenceas well as for search into the future and

therapy for violence we would tend toreject the position that violence presup-poses a pre-history of violence of the

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same or opposite kinds. This view is a

breeding theory, and like all breedingtheories it fails to answer two questions:how did the process come into being atall? and is spontaneous generation ofviolence impossible, or are all cases ofviolence the legitimate offspring of othercases of violence - handed down throughsome kind of apostolic succession, thecontent being more like ’original sin’

though?Take the case of structural violence

first. Here it may be argued we will neverget the perfect test-case. Imagine webased our thinking on something likethis: people, when left to themselves inisolation (in a discussion group, strandedon an isolated island, etc.) will tend toform systems where rank, or differentialevaluation of relatively stable interactionpatterns referred to as status, will emerge;high ranks tend to cluster on persons whoalready have some high ranks, and inter-action tends to flow in their direction -hence the net result is sooner or later afeudal structure. One might then object:yes, because these persons are alreadysocialized into such structures, and all

they do is to project their experiences andtheir habits so as to give life to an em-bryonic structure. And there is no wayaround it: human beings, to be human,have to be rated by humans, hence therewill always be an element of succession.Maybe, but, we also suspect that the

reasoning above holds true even undertabula rasa conditions because it prob-ably is connected with the fact (1) thatindividuals are different and (2) that thesedifferences somehow are relevant fortheir interaction behavior. Hence, spe-cial measures are needed to prevent theformation of feudal structures: struc-

tural violence seems to be more ’natural’than structural peace. And similarly withpersonal violence: it is difficult to see howeven the most egalitarian structure wouldbe sufficient to prevent cases of violence,

whether they result from conflicts or not.Personal violence is perhaps more ’na-tural’ than personal peace. It could alsobe argued that an inegalitarian structureis a built-in mechanism of conflict con-

trol, precisely because it is hierarchical,and that an egalitarian structure wouldbring out in the open many new conflictsthat are kept latent in a feudal structure.One could now proceed by saying

that even if one type of violence does not

presuppose the manifest presence of the

other, neither synchronically, nor dia-

chronically, there is nevertheless the

possibility that manifest structural viol-ence presupposes latent personal violence.When the structure is threatened, thosewho benefit from structural violence,above all those who are at the top, willtry to preserve the status quo so well

geared to protect their interests. By ob-serving the activities of various groupsand persons when a structure is threaten-

ed, and more particularly by noticingwho comes to the rescue of the structure,an operational test is introduced that canbe used to rank the members of thestructure in terms of their interest in

maintaining the structure. The involve-ment that does not show clearly in timesof unimpeded persistence is brought upto the surface when there is turbulence.But one has to observe carefully, forthose most interested in the maintenanceof status quo may not come openly tothe defence of the structure: they maypush their mercenaries in front of them.28In other words, they may mobilize thepolice, the army, the thugs, the generalsocial underbrush against the sources

of the disturbance, and remain them-selves in more discrete, remote seclusionfrom the turmoil of personal violence.And they can do this as an extrapolationof the structural violence: the violencecommitted by the police is personal byour definition, yet they are called intoaction by expectations deeply rooted in

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the structure - there is no need to assumean intervening variable of intention.

They simply do their job.This view is probably generally very

valid, even if it may underestimate thesignificance of a number of factors:

1. the extent to which the ’tools of oppression’may have internalized the repressive struc-ture so that their personal violence is an ex-pression of internalized, not only institution-alized norms;

2. the extent to which those who benefit fromthe structural violence may theniselves havesevere and sincere doubts about that struc-ture and prefer to see it changed, even attheir own expense;

3. the extent to which the ’challenge of thestructure’ may be a personal confrontationwith the police etc. more than with the

structure, and reveal more about the dyna-mics of interpersonal relations than aboutthe structure.29

4. the extent to which all members in a violentstructure, not only the topdogs, contributeto its operation and hence are all responsibleas they can all shake it through their non-cooperation.

But these are minor points; social affairsalways refuse to be captured in simplisticformulations. More important is whetherone can also turn the proposition aroundand gain some insight by saying thatmanifest personal violence presupposeslatent structural violence - which is notthe same as saying that it presupposesmanifest structural violence. The ideawould be that of an egalitarian structuremaintained by means of personal vio-lence, so that when this pattern of vio-lence is challenged to the point of aboli-tion there will be an emergence of struc-tural violence.The proposition is interesting because

it may open for some possible insights instructures yet unknown to us. It does notseem a priori unreasonable to state thatif the absence of personal violence iscombined with a pattern of structuralviolence, then personal violence is never-

theless around the corner - and corre-

spondingly that if absence of structuralviolence is combined with personal vio-lence, then structural violence is alsoaround the comer. All we are saying is onlythat the sum of violence is constant, onlythat one has to take into account the latent

variety of the type of violence ’abolished’to see more clearly how that type is in astandby position, ready to step in oncethe other type crumbles. Absence of one

type of violence is bought at the expenseof the threat of the other.

But, however insight-stimulating thismay be in certain situations we refuse to

accept this pessimistic view for two rea-sons. First, the two propositions seemsimply not to be true. It is not at alldifficult to imagine a structure so purelystructural in its violence that all meansof personal violence have been abolished,so that when the structure is threatenedthere is no second trench defense bymobilizing latent personal violence. Simi-larly, a structure may be completelyunprepared for freezing the released for-ces stemming from a reduction of per-sonal violence into a hierarchical order.

Empirically such cases may be rare, butyet significant.

Second, the assumption would be thathuman beings somehow need violence tobe kept in line; if not of the personaltype, then of the structural variety. Theargument would be that if there is no

personal violence or threat of personalviolence then a very strong hierarchicalorder is needed to maintain order andto control conflict; and if there is nostructural violence or threat of structuralviolence, then personal violence will

easily serve as a substitute. But even ifthis may be a reasonable theory to explainpossible empirical regularities, that initself is not sufficient argument for rei-fying a regularity into a principle sup-posedly eternally valid. On the contrary,this would be a highly pessimistic view

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of the human condition, and to acceptit fully would even be a capitulationistview.From the problem of whether one type

of violence is necessary to obtain or

sustain the other type, whether at themanifest or the latent levels, it is not farto the opposite problem: is one type ofviolence necessary or sufficient to abolishthe other type? The question, which

actually splits into four questions, bringsus directly into the center of contempo-rary political debate. Let us examine

briefly some of the arguments.

1. Structural violence is sufficient to abolish

personal violence. This thesis seems to have acertain limited and short-term validity. If allthe methods mentioned above for sustainingstructural violence are implemented, thenit seems quite possible that personal violencebetween the groups segregated by the struc-ture is abolished. The underdogs are tooisolated and too awed by the topdogs, thetopdogs have nothing to fear. But this onlyholds between those groups; within the

groups the feudal structure is not practised.And although the structure probably is

among the most stable social structures

imaginable, it is not stable in perpetuity.There are many ways in which it may be

upset, and result in tremendous outbursts of

personal violence. Hence, it may perhaps besaid to be a structure that serves to compart-mentalize personal violence in time, leadingto successions of periods of absence and pre-sence of personal violence.

2. Structural violence is necessary to abolish

personal violence. This is obviously not true,since personal violence will cease the mo-ment the decision not to practise it is taken.But this is of course begging the question:under what condition is that decision madeand really sustained? That structural vio-lence represent3 an alternative in the sensethat much of the ’order’ obtained by meansof (the threat of) personal violence can alsobe obtained by (the threat of) structuralviolence is clear enough. But to state a re-lation of necessity is to go far outside ourlimited empirical experience.

3. Personal violence is sufficient to abolishstructural violence. Again, this thesis seemsto have a certain limited short-term validity.

Personal violence directed against the top-dogs in a feudal structure incapacitatingthem bodily by means of the techniques inTable 1, used singly or combined. When thetopdogs are no longer there to exercisetheir roles the feudal structure can clearlyno longer function. Hence, just as under 1above between-group structural violencemay be abolished by this process. But toabolish the topdogs in a violent structure isone thing, to abolish the violent structurequite another, and it is this fallacy of mis-placed concreteness that is one of the stron-gest arguments against the proposition. Thenew power group may immediately fill thevacancies, retaining the structure, onlychanging the names of the incumbents andpossibly the rationalization of the structure,in which case the structural violence is noteven abolished for a short term. Or the struc-ture may re-emerge after some time, becauseof internal dynamism or because it has afterall been firmly imprinted on the minds ofthe new power-holders and has thus beenpresent all the time in latent form.

4. Personal violence is necessary to abolishstructural violence. This is, of course, a fa-mous revolutionary proposition with a cer-tain currency. One may argue against it onthree grounds: empirically, theoreticallyand axiologically. Empirically one wouldpoint to all the cases of structural changedecreasing structural violence that seem totake place without personal violence. Thecounter-argument will be that there were ca-ses with no basic change of the structure, forif there had been a fundamental threat to thepower-holders then they would have resortedto personal violence. Theoretically one wouldpoint to the qualitative difference betweenthe means of personal and structural vio-lence and ask: even if personal violence maylead to the abolition of structural violence,is it not likely that some, and possibly alsomore effective means of changing a structurewould be structural, for instance systematicchanges of interaction networks, rank pro-files etc.? In other words, the belief in theindispensability of personal violence could besaid, on theoretical grounds, to be a case offetishization of personal violence. And thenthere is the axiological argument: even if

personal violence could be seen as indispens-able up till today, on empirical and/ortheoretical grounds, this would be one moregood reason for a systematic search for theconditions under which this indispensabi-lity would disappear.

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Again our search seems to fail to

uncover any absolutes. It is hard to

sustain a belief in sufficiency or necessityone way or the other. The two types ofviolence simply do not seem to be moretightly connected empirically than logi-cally - and as to the latter, the wholeexercise is an effort to show that they maybe seen as logically independent eventhough they are continuous with eachother: one shades into the other.But even if one now rejects reduction-

ism one way or the other there wouldstill be good reason for focussing researchattention more on one kind of violencethan on the other: it may always be ar-gued than one is much more importantin its consequences than the other. Thus,imagine we were able to calculate the

losses incurred by the two forms of vio-lence, or the gains that would accrue tomankind if they could be eliminated. Inprinciple this should not be quite impossi-ble, at least not for the simpler physicalforms of violence that show up in termsof mortality, and possibly also in terms ofmorbidity. Mortality and morbidity ratesunder the condition of absence of warcan usually be calculated relatively wellby extrapolation from pre-war and post-war data. It is more difficult for the caseof absence of exploitation, but not im-possible : we could calculate the levels at-tained if all available resources were usedfor the purpose of extending and im-proving the biological life-span and inaddition were distributed in an egalitar-ian fashion in social space. The costsincurred by violence of one form or theother would then appear as the differencebetween the potential and the actual, asthe definition requires, and the costs canthen be compared. One could also imag-ine calculations of the costs of the jointoperation of the two forms of violence.One significant feature of such calcu-

lations, that definitely should have a highpriority on the research program of peace

research institutes, is that the door wouldbe opened for answers to questions suchas whether the costs in terms of personalviolence were higher or lower than thegains in reduction of structural violencein, say, the Cuban revolution. The pre-sent author would say that they weredefinitely lower, using comparable LatinAmerican countries as a basis for evalu-

ating the costs of the structural violenceunder Batista, but in the equation onewould of course also have to include the

personal violence under Batista and thestructural violence under Castro, e. g. inthe form of almost complete alienation ofthe former bourgeoisie, not only as statusholders, but as persons. Such statementsare impressionistic however, they shouldbe backed up empirically.

But however attractive such calcula-tions may be - for reasons of intellectual

curiosity about the dynamics of violence,structural and personal, even to developmuch higher levels of theoretical in-

sights in these phenomena than we possesstoday - this is not the same as acceptingcost-benefit analysis in this field as a

basis for political action. The point hereis not so much that one may have objec-tions to projecting the mathematical ’onehuman life-year = one human life-year’,regardless how it is lost or gained, on tothe stage of political action, but ratherthat this type of analysis leads to muchtoo modest goals for political action.

Imagine that the general norm were for-mulated ’you shall act politically so asto decrease violence, taking into accountboth before and after levels of personaland structural violence’. A norm of thatkind would be blind to possible differen-ces in structural and personal violencewhen it comes to their potential for get-ting more violence in the future. But itwould also condone action as long asthere is any decrease, and only steer polit-ical action downwards on the violencesurface, not lead to a systematic search

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for the steepest gradient possible, evenfor a descent route hitherto unknownto man.

But equally important is to recall thatit is hardly possible to arrive at any

general judgment, independent of timeand space, as to which type of violenceis more important. In space, today, it

may certainly be argued that researchin the Americas should focus on struc-tural violence, between nations as wellas between individuals, and that peaceresearch in Europe should have a similarfocus on personal violence. Latent per-sonal violence in Europe may erupt intonuclear war, but the manifest structuralviolence in the Americas (and not onlythere) already causes an annual toll ofnuclear magnitudes. In saying this, weare of course not neglecting the structuralcomponents of the European situation,(such as the big power dominance andthe traditional exploitation of Eastern

Europe by Western Europe) nor are weforgetful of the high level of personalviolence in the Americas even though itdoes not take the form of internationalwarfare (but sometimes the form of in-terventionist aggression).

5. On the definition of ’peace’ and

’peace research’With the distinction between personaland structural violence as basic, violencebecomes two-sided, and so does peaceconceived of as the absence of violence.An extended concept of violence leads toan extended concept of peace. Just as acoin has two sides, one side alone beingonly one aspect of the coin, not the com-plete coin, peace also has two sides:absence of personal violence, and absenceof structural violence.30 We shall refer tothem as negative peace and positive peacerespectively.31

For brevity the formulations ’absenceof violence’ and ’social justice’ may

perhaps be preferred, using one negativeand one positive formulation. The reasonfor the use of the terms ’negative’ and’positive’ is easily seen: the absence ofpersonal violence does not lead to a

positively defined condition, whereas theabsence of structural violence is what wehave referred to as social justice, whichis a positively defined condition (egali-tarian distribution of power and re-

sources). Thus, peace conceived this wayis not only a matter of control and reduc-tion of the overt use of violence, but of

Figure 4. The Extended Concepts of Violenceand Peace

what we have elsewhere referred to as’vertical development’.32 And this meansthat peace theory is intimately connectednot only with conflict theory, but equallywith development theory. And peaceresearch, defined as research into theconditions - past, present and future -of realizing peace, will be equally inti-mately connected with conflict researchand development research; the formeroften more relevant for negative peaceand the latter more relevant for positivepeace, but with highly important over-laps.To justify this way of looking at peace

and peace research, let us see where themany efforts to conceive of peace interms of only one of these ’sides’ or

aspects leads us. Such efforts are likelyto bring into focus, in theory and indeed

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in practice, the onesidedness on whichthey are based and to highlight the needfor richer concepts of peace. Here onlya very sketchy outline of this type ofanalysis will be presented, particularlysince relations between personal andstructural violence were to some extent

explored in the preceding section.Thus, a research emphasis on the re-

duction of personal violence at the ex-pense of a tacit or open neglect of re-search on structural violence leads, veryeasily, to acceptance of ’law and order’societies.33 Personal violence is built intothe system as work is built into a com-pressed spring in a mattress: it onlyshows when the mattress is disintegra-ting. And on the other hand there maybe a research emphasis on righting socialwrongs on obtaining social justice at theexpense of a tacit or open acceptance anduse of personal violence. The short-termcosts of personal violence appear as smallrelative to the costs of continued struc-tural violence. But personal violencetends to breed manifest physical violence,not only from the opponent but also in-side one’s own group - and the aftermathof violent revolutions generally seems totestify to this.We may summarize by saying that too

much research emphasis on one aspect ofpeace tends to rationalize extremism tothe right or extremism to the left, de-

pending on whether onesided emphasisis put on ’absence of personal violence’or on ’social justice’. And these two typesof extremism are of course not onlyformally, but also socially closely relatedand in a dialectic manner: one is often areaction to the other. When put into

practice both may easily develop intowell-known social orders where neitherof the two aspects of peace are realized:gross social injustice is maintained bymeans of highly manifest personal vio-lence. The regime usually tries to main-tain a status quo, whether it means force-

ful maintenance of traditional social in-

justice that may have lasted for genera-tions, or the forceful maintenance of somenew type of injustice brought in by an at-tempt to overthrow the old system.

If ’peace’ now is to be interpreted asan effort to play on both, one may ask:does this not simply mean some kind of’moderate’ course, some effort to appear’objective’ by steering carefully betweenthe two types of extremism outlinedabove? There is no doubt a danger inthis direction. Efforts to avoid both

personal and structural violence mayeasily lead to accept one of them, or evenboth. Thus, if the choice is between

righting a social wrong by means ofpersonal violence or doing nothing, thelatter may in fact mean that one supportsthe forces behind social injustice. Andconversely: the use of personal violencemay easily mean that one gets neitherlong-term absence of violence nor justice.

Or, we can put the argument in a

slightly different framework. If we areinterested in e.g. social justice but alsoin the avoidance of personal violence,does this not constrain our choice ofmeans so much that it becomes meaning-ful only in certain societies? And particu-larly in societies that have already realizedmany social-liberal values, so that thereis considerable freedom of speech andassembly, and organizations for effectivearticulation of political interests? Where-as we are literally immobilized in highlyrepressive societies, or ’more openly re-pressive societies’ as modem critics ofliberalism might say? Thus, if our choiceof means in the fight against structuralviolence is so limited by the non-use ofpersonal violence that we are left withoutanything to do in highly repressive soci-eties, whether the repression is latent ormanifest, then how valuable is this recipefor peace?To this we may answer along many

lines.

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One answer would be to reject the de-finition given above of peace, becausewe want ’peace’ to refer to somethingattainable and also in fact attained, notto something as utopian as both absenceof personal violence and social justice.We may then slant the definition of

’peace’ in the direction of absence of

personal violence, or absence of struc-tural violence, depending on where ourpriorities are. In our definition above wehave suggested that the two enter in acompletely symmetrial manner: there isno temporal, logical or evaluative pre-ference given to one or the other. Socialjustice is not seen as an adornment to

peace as absence of personal violence,nor is absence of personal violence seenas an adornment to peace as social jus-tice. Unfortunately, on the printed page,one has to appear before the other orabove the other, and this is often inter-preted as priority (compare the recentdebate on whether a certain group’s po-litical slogan should be ’peace and free-dom’ or ’freedom and peace’). Actually,somebody should invent some way ofprinting so that absolutely no connota-tion of priority is implied.

This approach presupposes that we

somehow are attracted by the term

’peace’ and would like to let that wordexpress our goal rather than some otherword. But another answer would be to

give up the word ’peace’ and simplystate our interest in one or both of thetwo values and then try to do our bestalong both dimensions, so to speak. Thisappears less satisfactory, because of thegenerally widespread use of the term

’peace’ - so widespread and so generallyacknowledged that it possibly presentssome kind of substitute in this secular

age for feelings of devotion and commu-nity that in former ag6s were invoked byreference to religious concepts. In fact,’peace’ has indeed religious overtones

to many, and that this probably contri-

butes to the use of the word ’peace’ as acarrier of feelings of universal love andbrotherhood in our days. Hence, in

spite of the many possibilities for seman-tic confusion, we would argue in favorof retaining the term ’peace’.A third answer would be to combine

the first two approaches, to talk little orat least not very loudly about peace - forfear of blushing, among other reasons -and to give up one of the two goals, ab-sence of violence and social justice. Thisattitude, found today in several circles,may be commended for its honesty andlack of hypocrisy. Neither the ’law andorder’ racist or primitive capitalistsociety, nor the openly repressive post-revolutionary society is presented as real-izations of ’peace’, but as social orderswhere one made a choice between two

evils, direct violence or social injustice,using what was seen as the lesser evil todrive out the greater evil (possibly endingup with both).And then there is a fourth approach

which will be preferred in this context.It may be expressed as follows:Both values, both goals are significant,

and it is probably a disservice to man totry, in any abstract way, to say that oneis more important than the other. As

mentioned, it is difficult to compare theamount of suffering and harm that has beencaused by personal or structural violence;they are both of such an order of magni-tude that comparisons appear meaning-less. Moreover, they seem often to be

coupled in such a way that it is verydifficult to get rid of both evils; morelikely the Devil is driven out with Beel-zebub. In view of this difficulty, so amplytestified through human history, we

should be very careful in passing moraljudgements too readily on those who failto realize both goals. To realize one ofthem is no mean achievement either, parti-cularly if we consider the number of socialorders and regimes that realize neither.

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But the view that one cannot meaning-fully work for both absence of personalviolence and for social justice can also beseen as essentially pessimistic, as somesort of intellectual and moral capitulation-ism.34 First of all, there are many formsof social action available today thatcombine both in a highly meaningful way.We are thinking of the tremendouslyrapid growth in the field of nonviolentaction, both in dissociative nonviolencethat serves to keep parties apart so thatthe weaker part can establish autonomyand identity of its own, and associativenonviolence that can serve to bring themtogether when a basis for equal non-exploitative partnership exists.35 We arethinking of all that is known about thetheories of symmetric, egalitarian organ-ization in general.36 We are thinking ofthe expanding theory of vertical develop-

ment, of participation, decentralization,codecision. And we are thinking of thevarious approaches to arms control anddisarmament issues, although they areperhaps of more marginal significance.37This is not the place to develop thesethemes; that will be done in other con-texts. But secondly, once the double goalhas been stated - that peace research isconcerned with the conditions for pro-moting both aspects of peace - there isno reason to believe that the future willnot bring us richer concepts and moreforms of social action that combineabsence of personal violence with fightagainst social injustice once sufficient

activity is put into research and practiceThere are more than enough peoplewilling to sacrifice one for the other - itis by aiming for both that peace researchcan make a real contribution.

NOTES* The present article (PRIO-publication No. 23-9 - is a revised version of talks originally pre-sented by the author at the Oslo Conference on the plan for a peacemaker’s academy, organizedjointly by the Peacemakers’ Academy Committee, Vermont and the International Peace ResearchInstitute, Oslo, 14-17 November 1968; at the peace research seminar organized by the GandhianInstitute of Studies, Varanasi, 8-9 March 1969; at the meeting of the Japan Peace Research GroupTokyo, 27 March 1969; at a seminar organized by the Seminar for Peace and Conflict Research,Lund, 26 April 1969, and at the international seminar organized by the Centro Studi e Iniziative,Partinico, 3-4 May 1969. I am indebted to the organizers of these meetings, Randolph Major,Sugata Dasgupta, Hisako Ukita, Håkan Wiberg and Danilo Dolci and to many participants forhighly stimulating comments and criticism. But special gratitude should be expressed to HermanSchmid, Lund University, Sweden, for his lucid and important criticism of some concepts of peaceresearch, in Journal of Peace Research, 1968, pp. 217-232. Although I agree neither with his cri-tique nor with his proposals, and feel that his way of presenting my own views is misleading, thereare certainly few persons who have stimulated discussion and rethinking in this fundamental fieldso much. However, the present article is not a systematic answer to his arguments, but rather aneffort, partly stimulated by him, to indicate what to the present author seems to be a fruitful wayof thinking about violence, peace and peace research.1 This point is elaborated further in Theories of Peace (forthcoming), Chapter 1.1.2 This, of course, is not strictly true. It was not on Fascist or nazi agendas, nor is it on the agendaof contemporary revolutionary thinking. However, even for these cases violence is not an end, butrather a means to overcome obstacles impeding the realization of a future order, the millennium,the communist society, etc; these future orders do not seem to contain violence. But this is hardlya universal human invariant. The Viking paradise looks violent, and warlike tribes/societies like thePathans would probably put complete absence of violence last on the agenda, if at all.3 But what if a social order is such that some people live well in solid, concrete houses and othersin shacks that crumble under the first quake, killing the inhabitants? In other words, even if thenatural disaster is unavoidable, differential social impact may have been avoidable. This maycertainly justify the use of the term ’structural violence’ for such differential housing standards,not only because of differential exposure to earthquakes (as in the earthquake zone in WesternSicily), but because of implications for differential health standards in general, educational possi-

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bilities, and so on and so forth. Whether it justifies the use of such epithets as ’violent’ or ’assas-sin’ to the people sustaining such social structures, or (which is not quite the same) to the peopleon top of such social structures, is another matter.4 Since the potential level depends not only on the use and distribution of available resources,but also on insight, a crucial person in this picture is the scientist or anyone who opens for newinsights into how old, or new, resources may be utilized. In other words, anyone who makespossible what was formerly not feasible raises the level of potentiality. But the level may also belowered, perhaps not so often because insight is forgotten (although history is full of such casestoo) as because resources become more scarce - for instance due to pollution, hoarding, over-utilization, etc. In short, we make no assumption about the shape of the potential realizationcurve through time, nor do we make any assumption about the corresponding curve for actualrealization. In particular we reject the optimistic assumption according to which both curves aremonotonously increasing and with a decreasing gap so that there is asymptotic convergence of theactual to the potential, ’until the potentialities of man are fully realized’. This is an ideology,usually in the form of an underlying assumption, not a description or reality. As Bertrand Russellwrites (Autobiography, Vol, III, p. 221): ’When I was young, Victorian optimism was taken forgranted. It was thought that freedom and prosperity would spread gradually throughout the worldby an orderly process, and it was hoped that cruelty, tyranny and injustice would continuallydiminish. Hardly anyone was haunted by the fear of great wars. Hardly anyone thought of thenineteenth century as a brief interlude between past and future barbarism -.’ In short, let usmake no assumptions, but focus on the causes for a discrepancy between the curves, admitting fora lag in the application and distribution of new insights; whether they are called technologicalor social.

5 However, it is by no means obvious how potential life-span should be defined. One cannot usethe age at death of the oldest person dying today or this year; this may be too low because he doesnot benefit from possible advances in hygiene etc. made too late to have an impact on him, or notyet made, and it may be too high because he is specially advantaged genetically. But the averageof the p% of the social order benefiting fully from insight and resources already available shouldat least yield a basis for an estimate of what is possible today.6 In an article ’On the Meaning of Nonviolence’, Journal of Peace Research, 1965, pp. 228-257the concept of influence is basic in an effort to analyze the difference between violence and non-violence, and positive and negative versions of the latter. In the present article the focus is on atypology of violence, not on a typology of non-violence.7 Ibid., pp. 230-234.8 Loc. cit.9 This is a recurrent theme in Herbert Marcsue, One-dimensional Man (Boston Press, 1968),especially Part I, ’One-dimensional Society’.10 This is a recurrent theme in much of the analysis of violence in the US. Violence againstproperty is seen as training, the first window-pane crushed to pieces is also a blow against thebourgeois in oneself, a liberation from former constraints, an act of communication signalling toeither camp a new belongingness and above all a rejection of tacit rules of the game. ’If they cando that to property, what can they do to persons -’11 It was pointed out by Herman Kahn (at a seminar at PRIO, May 1969) that middle classstudents and lower class police may have highly different relations to property: as somethinghighly replaceable for the middle class student in an affluent society, as something difficult toattain for a lower class Irish cop. What to one is a relatively unproblematic act of communicationmay to the other be sacriligeous, particularly since students probably aspire to mobility and free-dom unfettered by property ties.12 The term ’institutional violence’ is often sometimes used, but we have preferred ’structural’since it is often of a more abstract nature and not anything that can be traced down to a particularinstitution. Thus, if the police are highly biased the term institutionalized violence may be appro-priate, but this is a highly concrete case. There may be violence built into a structure without anypolice institution at all, as will be developed in the next section.13 This is clearly expressed by Stokeley Carmichael in ’Black Power’ (The Dialectics of Liberation,David Cooper ed., London Penguin, p. 151, 1968):

’It is important to this discussion of racism to make a distinction between the two types:individual racism and institutional racism. The first type consists of overt acts by individ-uals, with usually immediate results of the death of victims, or the traumatic and violent

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destruction of property. This type can be recorded on TV cameras and can frequently be ob-served in the process of commission.The second type is less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific individ-

uals committing the acts, but is no less destructive of human life. The second type is morethe overall operation of established and respected forces in the society and thus does not re-ceive the condemnation that the first type receives.

His distinction individual/institutional is the same as our personal/structural. But we prefer theterm ’personal’ because the person sometimes acts on behalf of groups, whereas ’individual’ maybe interpreted as the opposite of ’group’. But particularly in the context Carmichael discussesgroup violence is immensely important - the mob lynching as opposed to the individual murderer -but that does not make the violence institutional. It still satisfies all the other criteria, e. g. itconsists of ’overt acts by individuals’, ’can be recorded on TV-cameras’ (as in a war), etc.14 The difficulty here, as often pointed out, is that international statistics usually reflect averagesand not dispersions, ranking nations in order of average achievement, not in terms of degree ofequality achieved in distribution. One reason is of course that such data are not readily available,but that is only begging the question why they are not available. One reason for that again may bethat it upsets ranking orders and reveals less positive aspects of social orders used to define them-selves as world leaders, but that is hardly a sufficient explanation. Another reason might be thatthe problem is simply not sufficiently clearly defined, nor is it regarded as sufficiently feasible orindeed desirable to decrease dispersions. When this becomes sufficiently crystallized it will alsofind expressions in international statistics.15 The remark in the preceding note holds a fortiori here: not only is it difficult to present anymeasure of dispersion of power, it is difficult enough to measure power at all, except in the purelyformal sense of voting rights. He who comes up with a really meaningful measure in this field willcontribute greatly to crystallization of political fighting as well as administrative endeavors.16 Again the same: the publications of these correlations would contribute significantly to in-creased awareness, since the current ideology is precisely that correlations between achieved andascribed ranks should be as low as possible, preferably zero.17 Economic sanctions occupy interesting middle position here. They are clearly violent in theirultimate consequences, which are starvation etc., but the hope is of course that they are slowenough to permit capitulation much before that. At the same time they are clearly also built intothe structure, for the most vulnerable countries are also the countries that tend to be at the bottomof the international stratification in general: high in dependence on trade, low in commoditydispersion and low on trade partner dispersion. See Johan Galtung, ’On the Effects of Interna-tional Economic Sanctions, With Examples from the Case of Rhodesia’, World Politics, 1967,pp. 387-416.18 One expression of what is meant by social justice is found in declarations of human rights,where a number of norms about equality are stated. However, they very often suffer from the defi-ciency that they are personal more than structural. They refer to what individuals can do or canhave, not to who or what decides what they can do or have; they refer to distribution of resources,not to power over the distribution of resources. In other words, human rights as usually conceivedof are quite compatible with paternalism whereby power-holders distribute anything but ultimatepower over the distributions, so that equalization without any change in the power structure isobtained. It is almost painful to see how few seem to realize that much of the current anti-estab-lishment anti-authority revolt is precisely about this: concessions are not enough, not evenequality is enough, it is the way in which decisions about distribution are arrived at and imple-mented that is basic. But there is little reason to believe that this will not also in due time crystallizeinto some kind of human right and be added to that list of philosophical and political battlefields.19 Exploitation also has an ambiguity which we actually have exploited in this section. There seemsto be a liberal interpretation in terms of distribution and inequality, and a Marxist interpretationin terms of power, particularly over the use of the surplus produced by others (in a capitalisteconomy). Clearly one can have one type of exploitation without the other.20 I am indebted to Hans Rieger and other participants in the seminar at the Gandhian Instituteof Studies for pointing out the possibility of using the manifest-latent distinction in connectionwith both personal and structural violence.21 This is a point where Gandhi and Mao Tse-Tung would agree in theory, although in practicethey are both so dominant in their organizations that it probably was not too meaningful to speakcf real egalitarianism.

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22 See Note 13 for Carmichael’s analysis. The basic point in our communication structure is ofcourse that personal violence much more easily ’can be recorded on TV cameras’, although thisis not correct strictly speaking. There is no intrinsic reason why structural violence should not beregistered on TV cameras; in fact, really good cameramen delight in doing exactly this. But theconcept of news is against its prominent display; that concept is in itself geared to personal ratherthan structural violence. For an analysis, see Johan Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge, ’TheStructure of Foreign News’, Journal of Peace Research, 1965, pp. 64-91, especially on person-vs Structure-oriented news.23 Herman Schmid seems to be very correct when he points out (op. cit., p. 217) that peaceresearch grew out of a certain historical condition and the basic concepts were colored by thatcondition. No doubt this explains some of the emphasis on symmetric conflict, and we would add,on personal violence both because of war memories and war threats. However, the threats of a ma-jor war in the North Atlantic area failed to materialize, economic growth continued, but exploi-tation remained constant or increased. So, towards the end of the ’sixties the focus changes;’ forsome persons to a completely new focus (as when Schmid and others would argue in favor ofconflict creation research, of polarization and revolution research), for others (as the present au-thor) to an extension of focus, as argued in the present article.24 Thus, it is almost unbelievable how little the gap between rich and poor seems to be affectedby the general increase, within nations and between nations.25 This is the general theme in Johan Galtung, ’A structural Theory of Integration’, Journal ofPeace Research, 1968, pp. 375-395.26 One of these implications is of course that it enhances his power: he monopolizes informationfrom the level above and can convert this into power at his own level. Another implication isthat he is very often untrained for or unfit for the task to be performed at the higher level sincehis frame of reference all the time has been level n-1. The manager of a certain type of productssuddenly finds himself on the board of a big business corporation doing quite different things; theteading nation in a regional alliance suddenly finds itself responsible for world affairs and forcedto think within a completely new frame of reference, and so on.27 We have not discussed the possibility of denying rank differences completely by making every-body equal, since there seem always to be some differences that elude equalization attempts andthese differences tend to become significant. Make everybody citizens with equal voting rights, anddifferences in style of life become overwhelming, abolish class differences on trains and the upperclasses go by plane, and so on.28 Few have expressed this image as well as Eldridge Cleaver in Soul on Ice (London: Cape, 1969,p. 92):

’Both police and the armed forces follow orders. Orders. Orders flow from the top down.Up there, behind closed doors, in antechambers, in conference rooms, gavels bang on thetables, the tinkling of silver decanters can be heard as ice water is poured by well fed, con-servatively dressed men in horn-rimmed glasses, fashionably dressed American widowswith rejuvenated faces and tinted hair, the air permeated with the square humor of BobHope jokes. Here all the talking is done, all the thinking, all the deciding.Gray rabbits of men scurry forth from the conference room to spread decisions through-

out the city, as News. Carrying out orders is a job, a way of meeting the payments on thehouse, a way of providing for one’s kiddies. In the armed forces it is also a duty, patriotism’Not to do so is treason.’

29 See Note 11 for Kahn’s analysis, where he added that fighting with fists would be about asnatural for the Irish cops as it is unnatural for the upper middle class student, and fighting withwords as natural for that student as it is unnatural for the cop. Hence, when the student destroysproperty and heaps abuse on the police he challenges the police much beyond the tolerance level,and the police respond with the reaction they know, violence; a reaction for which the studentsare untrained. One does not need structural explanations to account for an outburst of violencein such cases. But one could ask why such people are in the police department, and one explanationcan supplement rather than supersede another.30 This coin metaphor, of course, is not to suggest that one side excludes the other. Indeed, aspointed out so many times in the preceding section: a given social order may exhibit both, one or(perhaps) neither of them. The metaphor applies to the conceptualization of peace, not to theempirical world.31 Of course, I am very much aware of changes in my own presentation of these concepts, just

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as I am confident that new formulations will follow in the wake of those presented here. Whereas’negative peace’ remains fairly constant, meaning ’absence of violence’, I think it gains from theprecision given to ’violence’ in that context, a ’personal violence’. But ’positive peace’ is con-stantly changing (as is ’positive health’ in medical science). I used to see it in terms of integra-tion and cooperation (’An Editorial’, JPR, 1964, pp. 1-4), but now agree fully with HermanSchmid that this expresses a much too integrated and symmetric view of conflict groups, andprobably reflects the East-West conflict or a certain ideology in connection with that conflict.I would now identify ’positive peace’ mainly with ’social justice’, the latter taken in the doublesense of this article - but I think one could also be open to other candidates for inclusion since thedefinition given of violence is broad enough also to point in other directions. This is to some extentattempted in section 1.3 of Theories of Peace. Moreover, I think Schmid is basically right (op. cit.p. 221) in saying that there is a tendency to focus on negative peace because consensus is moreeasily obtained - but I share his rejection of that tendency. To reveal and unmask the subtlemechanisms of structural violence and explore the conditions for their removal or neutralizationis at least as important, although comparisons of the two types of violence in terms of prioritiesseems a little bit like discussing whether medical research should focus on cancer or heart diseases.And to this should be added, emphatically, that a discipline fully satisfied with its own foundationsand definition is probably a dead discipline. Fundamental debate and debate over fundamentalsare the signs of health, not of disease. These issues are difficult, and we shall make progress onlythrough more practice in analyzing them and more praxis in working with them.32 In Theories of Development, forthcoming.33 Thus, there is little doubt that in general peace research (Schmid, op. cit., p. 222) in this decadethat has passed since it was launched has met with more approval from the north-western estab-lishment in the world than from other quarters, but so has cancer research. From this it does notfollow that peace research is meaningless to the third world and to revolutionary forces. The sameskewed distribution can be found almost anywhere, due to the skewed distribution of worldresources and the generally feudal structure of the world. But Schmid is certainly right in settingpeace research in a social setting: ’who will pay for it’, and ’who will be able to implement advicefrom peace researcher’ are basic questions. I only fail to see that there should be any implicitreason why peace research should fall into the arms of the establishment more than into other armsnot to mention be able to retain considerable autonomy in its pursuits. This presupposes an aca-demic structure that does not steer all research into the arms of the power-holders, left or right,but leaves the road open for pursuits of insights into the mechanisms behind any kind of violence,any kind of obstacle to human self realization.34 Thus, peace research is seen here as an effort to promote the realization of values. To whatextent these values coincide or not with the interests of certain groups is another matter. Hence,peace research could not be identified with the ideology of a group unless that group professedthe same values. It is also an open question whether group identification with these values will infact serve to promote these values.35 Some of this is explored in ’On the Meaning of Nonviolence’, and infinitely much more canbe done in this direction. However, the important thing seems to be that there is no reason what-soever why peace research should be tied to study of symmetric conflict only, and to integrative,or as we prefer to say, ’associative’ (integrative being too strong a term) approaches. Any effortto explore structural violence will lead to awareness of asymmetric conflict, between parties highlyunequal in capabilities - and I think it is unfair to state that this is neglected in the type of peaceresearch carried out at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo. The terms ’topdog-underdog’ may be unfamiliar and even be resented by those who prefer to do this research in aMarxist tradition and jargon, but it is nevertheless an effort. More precisely, the effort has been tounderstand better the structure of structural violence, one little indication of which is given insection 3 of this article. And there is no implicit reason why the remedy should be in associativepolicies only. On the contrary, I tend to feel in general that associative policies are for equals, i.e.for symmetric conflict, whereas polarization and dissociative policies are much better strategiesfor exploited groups. This is also reflected in the doubleness of non-violent strategies, all themes tobe more fully developed in Theories of Conflict (forthcoming). When Schmid says (op. cit., p. 219)that peace research ’should explain .. how latent conflicts are manifested - /and/how the presentinternational ystem is seriously challenged or even broken down’ he seems to betray the sametype of onesidedness that he accuses peace research of - interest in controlling manifest conflictsonly, in bringing about integration, in formulating problems in terms meaningful to international

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and supranational institutions. But this onesidedness will almost inevitably result if research shallbe geared to serve the interests of specific groups, high or low, instead of the promotion of values.It is as hard to believe that disintegration, polarization, dissociation is always the best strategy as itis to believe the opposite.But this seems to be closely related to Schmid’s conflictology (op. cit., pp. 224-228), where he

seems to believe that I have a subjectivistic conception of conflict. If there is anything the con-flict triangle purports to achieve it is exactly the opposite: the definition of conflict independentlyof attitudes and behavior, and also independently of perceptions of the situation held by theparties (as different from their attitudes to each other). To me, conflict is incompatibility of goals,but how these goals are established is a quite different matter. To ask the parties for their percep-tion of what they pursue and what, if anything, stands in the way is one, but only one approach.I have nothing against definitions in terms of ’interests’ the concept of ’goal’ is wide enough toencompass. The difficulty is, as Schmid readily and frankly admits (op. cit. p. 227) to ’decidewhat the interests are’ and I share with him the idea that ’this is a challenge rather than a reasonto abandon the idea of an interest definition of conflict’. But I feel these interests have to be pos-tulated, as I think Marx to a large extent did, and then one has to explore the implications. I alsothink they can be seen as expressions of values, but not necessarily held by the actor, nor necessar-ily held by the investigator, just as postulated values. Thus, if one feels it is contrary to the inter-ests of children, as autonomous human beings, to accept the tie as the children of their biologicalparents, then there is certainly an incompatibility in the present family system: parents have in-terests as owners incompatible with the children’s interests as self-owners. The only difference be-tween this example and Schmid’s master-slave example is that he gives a paradigm for a conflictof the past, I a paradigm for a conflict of the future, and moreover for a conflict I think will bemanifested fairly soon, in line with the general wave towards defeudalization of the social order.And I certainly agree with Schmid that polarization will here be a part of the solution.36 For an effort in this direction, see Johan Galtung, Cooperation in Europe (Strasbourg: Councilof Europe, 1968).37 An effort to give some reasons why are found in ’Two Approaches to Disarmament: TheLegalist and the Structuralist’, Journal of Peace Research 1967, pp.161-195.38 And it is of course not necessary that all or most or much of this sails under the flag of ’peaceresearch’ or any other flag for that matter- only the slightly totalitarian minded would be in-clined to feel so. What is important is that it is done, and that there is contact between differentapproaches so that they and others can benefit from ideological and institutional pluralism.