Building New Pathways to Peace

Foreword

vii Foreword johan galtung T he content of Building New Pathways to Peace places this joint Japan–U.S. project firmly at the forefront of contemporary peace research. During the Cold War, research projects mobilized the world’s intellectual strength against both a possible nuclear holocaust and the propaganda that then allocated blame and responsibility to one party only. Transnational and transdisciplinary peace research emerged, very much focused on conflict resolution and on disarmament—and not only nuclear disarmament. During the Cold War period, the focus was mainly on negative peace, which I have defined, in “Toward a Grand Theory of Negative and Positive Peace: Peace, Security, and Conviviality ,” as a limited sort of peace, merely an absence of violence (as in a cease-fire, which does little to resolve the underlying grievances of the parties involved). In negative peace, the two parties may not be fighting with each other, but neither do they have a harmonious relationship. At best, the two parties in a negative peace are indifferent to each other. It was this type of peace that interested the Cold War peace researchers , and they concentrated especially on two aspects of negative peace: how to prevent unresolved conflict from causing war, and how to control, monitor, reduce, and eliminate the instruments of war. Although this type of research was limited in scope, the work nevertheless was more focused on issues of mutual concern than were the egocentric and sometimes paranoid “security studies” of that period. viii Foreword But the authors of Building New Pathways to Peace go further than these Cold War researchers, well into an area I have called positive peace. This type of peace is marked not only by an absence of violence but also by harmony between parties (a harmony that may or may not be intended!). The borderline between positive peace and negative peace is not clear, nor does it have to be: it depends on the focus of new peace research that, like all research, tries to explore new intellectual territory (in contrast to the field of peace studies, which covers only old issues). If our focus is violence avoidance or prevention—and this applies not only to direct violence but also to structural violence (in which the social order directly or indirectly causes human suffering and death) and to cultural violence (in which aspects of culture can be used to legitimate either direct violence or structural violence)—then negative peace is the right term for what we seek. However, if our focus is to realize ever higher levels of violence-avoiding togetherness (beyond the bleak words of mere tolerance), and if we are interested in cooperating on joint projects that carry all parties to higher levels of human existence—all the way into the spiritual and the transcendental, with no fear of treading precisely where the angels tread—then we need to seek positive peace. For example, take collective memories—either traumatic memories or (equally peace-threatening) glorious collective memories—and look at efforts toward conciliation (I do not say reconciliation as there may be no actual event in the past to conciliate). In this case, we should look at the question, Conciliation for what? To prevent future violence? To create harmonious togetherness at a higher level? Or both? (Negative peace and positive peace do not exclude each other.) As another example, take interreligious relations. A division into four stages may be useful here: intolerance, tolerance, dialogue, mutuality . Intolerance is loaded with violence, from prejudice toward and discrimination against another religious group, to expulsion, killing, and genocide. But tolerance of other religious groups is a negative peace—in this case, there is parallel but passive coexistence on both sides. But this state of affairs is far from sufficient. Much better is a dialogue, based on mutual respect for and curiosity about the Other. This kind of dialogue explores the possibility of positive peace. But the dialogue operates only through mutuality: “I take in some of you” and “You take in some of me.” Here we are really in the territory of positive peace. That is, you seem to have a Truth I am missing, and maybe I have some Truth you Foreword ix have been looking for and have not known where to find. Could we both, through dialogue together, build on our two Truths? And finally, take direct and structural violence. To stop the former through a monitored cease...