Violence Peace and Peace Research

In Johan Galtung's 1969 paper, "Violence, Peace and Peace Research," he presents his theory of the Conflict Triangle, a framework used in the study of peace and conflict, with the purpose of defining the three key elements of violence that form this "triangle." The theory is based on the principle that peace must be defined by widely accepted social goals, and that any state of peace is characterized by the absence of violence. When a conflict has features of all three areas of violence, the result is a more consolidated, static state of violence in a social system, which may include a conflict or a nation-state, whereas the absence of these three typologies of violence results in peace.

Structural Violence, also referred to as social injustice, is defined as injustice and inequality built into the structure of society, resulting in unequal power and, subsequently, imbalanced life chances. There is no requirement for a clear actor to be defined as committing the violence, rather it is embedded within the institutions of the society, where the power to decide the distribution of resources is uneven. Rather than conveying a physical image, structural violence is an avoidable impairment of fundamental human needs. Structural violence is increased in situations where low income individuals also suffer in the rank dimensions of education, health, and power. This is due to an overall consolidation of factors in the social structure, resulting in a high correlation between social class and disempowerment. Structural violence can be recognized through its relative stability, having been built into the social structure. This can make structural violence difficult to ascertain, despite its often vast consequences. This concept has been applied in a large number of cases, some of the most notable are listed below.

Akhil Gupta argued in 2012 that structural violence has been the key influence in the nature and distribution of extreme suffering in India, driven by the Indian state in its alleged corruption, overly bureaucratic standards of governance used to exclude the middle and working classes from the political system through a system of politicized poverty.

Jacklyn Cock’s 1989 paper in the Review of African Political Economy applied Galtung’s theory of structural violence, analysing the role of militarized society under the apartheid regime of South Africa in the development of patriarchal values that is a form of structural violence against women. Cock found that tacit misdirection of women in society by its leadership focused their energies toward the direct and indirect incorporation of the patriarchal regime in order to maintain the status quo.

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