Irene goes on to expound Johan Galtung’s analysis; his distinction between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ peace. It’s interesting. The pivotal term for Galtung seems to be ‘violence’ and therefore how we think about this concept. His ‘negative peace’ is the mere absence of violence, his ‘positive peace’ is the elimination of ‘structural violence’. Nothing to do with inner peace. To do with ‘social justice’, if you like. On what basis? Presumably in the belief that if ‘social justice’ was achieved that would bring a true peace without the seeds of future conflict. (Are you buying this?) He is not alone in this analysis. When Kenneth Waltz and Rienhold Niebuhr look for the origins of war they also see them in dissatisfied societal groups. I think it was something about living and writing whilst the outcome of the Soviet experiment was still unknown.
“Violence is present when human beings are being influenced so that their actual somatic and mental realisations are below their potential realisations.” Irene writes this quote from Johan Galtung up on the board. A shriek goes up in the middle of the class. A Quaker has become agitated and upset. (During roll call two classmates had declared themselves to be Quakers). She believes that Galtung is doing violence to the English language. She hates it when people redefine words for their own purpose. In this case, I think that she is concerned that the meaning of violence is being debased. “We haven’t got anywhere stopping REAL violence yet, so please let’s not muddy the issue by equating lack of fulfilment with VIOLENCE.” Something like that. A second pacifist breaks loose: “and the UN refused to call Rwanda GENOCIDE!” Irene points out that this was because the US didn’t want to have to act under its treaty obligations; legal definition of words; wasn’t the UN’s fault. (The Vietnam War was ‘a police action’ after all.) I’m cool. So, for the purposes of his argument, Johan wants to call preventing people from achieving fulfilment ‘structural violence’; OK, I can live with that. But my point is to question his analysis. Whilst ‘social injustice’ can be seen as an engine for violence, even if it was achievable, would it bring PEACE; a peace you could actually wallow in. Or are we redefining ‘peace’ as ‘a satisfactory state of social affairs’? What the hell was John Lennon so up about, anyway?
Clearly I have some reading to do. Have I grasped Galtung's point or not? The library has emailed to say I can pick up one of his books. Yippee!
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Someone ought to comment...or perhaps there's some sort of analytical take on the pressure of blogs to react comments out of people being a from of violence itself - well if the re-defining of words can be seen as violence then the path is already greased up as hazardous.
Anyway, to cut to the chase, the people who seem to discuss exactly what violence is etc seem to be the people most sepearted, at least in a physical sense, from it. Whilst the are huge personal psychological connections that are 'acted out' through the medium of academia its still very distant from actual violence.
The point of this is perhaps made best by example, take Rwanda. The quantity of print (and audio and celluloid) taken up on the matter (most of it remarkably misinformed or at best uninformed about the complex politics of the region) does seem incredibly distant from the actual acts of violence at a local level. For instance someone wounded or killed someone else - it happened at a point in time at a particular location and had personal consequences on the person (victim and perpertrator) their friends and relatives. Yet the vast bulk of the analysis is to do with international political analysis and policy not with real lives.
Thus you get these amusing but nevertheless pointless discussions about what violence actually is etc. Slap them on the face good and hard that should bring them round to their senses!
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