Johan Galtung

Dzieła

• 1969Violence, Peace, and Peace Research (Przemoc, pokój i badania nad pokojem)

  Artykuł w „Journal of Peace Research”: przemoc występuje wszędzie tam, gdzie ludziom uniemożliwia się realizację ich potencjału; obok przemocy osobistej istnieje przemoc strukturalna, wbudowana w nierówne struktury społeczne, więc pokój oznacza brak obu.

• 1996Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization (Pokój środkami pokojowymi: pokój i konflikt, rozwój i cywilizacja)

  Podsumowanie jego teorii pokoju: dodaje „przemoc kulturową” – idee, które sprawiają, że przemoc bezpośrednia i strukturalna wydają się uprawnione – i proponuje sposoby twórczego, bezprzemocowego przekształcania konfliktów.

Stanowisko

Galtung is on the map as one of the founders of peace research as an academic discipline. His article of 1969 defined violence as the cause of the difference between what people could be and what they are: besides personal or direct violence there is structural violence, built into unequal social structures, which shortens lives through hunger, poverty or lack of medical care without an identifiable perpetrator. Correspondingly, “negative peace” is the absence of direct violence, “positive peace” the absence of structural violence and the presence of cooperation and justice. In 1990 he added “cultural violence”: ideas, from religion to ideology and science, that make the other forms of violence appear legitimate. Peace research should proceed like medicine, through diagnosis, prognosis and therapy, and conflicts should be transformed by creative and nonviolent means – a programme that drew on Gandhi, whose political ethics he had reconstructed with Arne Næss. He also described imperialism as a structural relation between centres and peripheries (1971). His concepts became standard in peace and development studies and well beyond. Statements he made in 2011–12 drew wide criticism for antisemitic stereotypes; they are set out under “Context & critique”.

Życie i kontekst

Johan Galtung was born on 24 October 1930 in Oslo. He took degrees in mathematics and sociology at the University of Oslo. As a conscientious objector he refused a civilian service that was longer than military service and spent six months in prison in 1954, where he worked on Gandhi’s political ethics. In 1959 he was among the founders of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), where he worked until 1969, and in 1964 he founded the Journal of Peace Research; from 1969 to 1977 he held a chair of conflict and peace research at the University of Oslo. He later taught at many universities around the world and in 1993 founded TRANSCEND, a network for conflict mediation and peace work. He received the Right Livelihood Award in 1987. He died on 17 February 2024.

Dalsze główne dzieła

• Gandhis politiske etikk (with A. Næss, 1955)
• Violence, Peace, and Peace Research (Journal of Peace Research 6, 1969)
• A Structural Theory of Imperialism (Journal of Peace Research 8, 1971)
• Cultural Violence (Journal of Peace Research 27, 1990)

Pojawia się w

• Debata „Wojna i pokój: kiedy użycie siły zbrojnej jest uzasadnione?”