ABSTRACT
Johan Galtung is the author of over 1,600 publications, including over 150 books. 1 His work has spanned seven decades and has had a profound influence on a multitude of disciplines within the humanities and the social sciences. 2 In this chapter, I will critically examine one of Galtung's most influential essays, “Violence, Peace and Peace Research.” This article appeared in 1969 and immediately provided a powerful and compelling unifying framework for the then nascent and conflicted field of Peace Studies. And although Galtung's ideas have evolved significantly over the years, that evolution itself cannot be properly understood without first coming to terms with his earliest work on the topics of peace and violence. Galtung has never fundamentally revised his general theoretical approach to these topics—that is, he has never categorically rejected his earliest statements as being deeply confused or fundamentally mistaken—and the overall Galtungian framework has continued to thrive within Peace Studies as one of its dominant research paradigms from the 1960s on. And his 1969 article in particular still frequently appears as required reading in Peace Studies courses around the world to this day.
