Peace is by no means a new concept in the world but how do we define it? Most often it is defined as the absence of something rather than the presence of some positive thing. Ask anyone on the street to define peace and the likely answer will be something eluding to the absence of war. The following definition of negative and positive peace come from my class notes and I hope it make you think a bit more deeply about peace and what it is we are truly hopign for. Is simply the absence of war or violent conflict what we mean when we plead for world peace or are we asking for something more?
I want more for the world than the absence of war.
Alex Schmid says:
Negative peace is: "The absence of war, organized military hostilities, or direct inter-personal or inter-group violence while the causes of the conflict remain ignored. Some peace researchers, such as J.Galtung, call this a negative peace, because injustice and structural violence are allowed to continue. Peace, positive: the absence of war and direct violence plus the presence of social
justice. It is a concept found in the works of Martin Luther Kind and J. Galtung, indicating the
absence of what Galtung calls structural violence which contributes to reducing the potential
life span of human beings below what it might otherwise be. Under positive peace, there is an
active presence of conflict-management institutions that deal with social conflicts in fair and
non-destructive ways.”
