Brief Reflections on Galtung's Peace and Development Problems

Autobiographical Background

In the early 1990s, while completing secondary school and planning to apply for entry to an undergraduate university program, I happened to obtain a collection of readings on the sociology of technology, compiled by Deakin University. Among the readings was a paper by Johan Galtung, outlining his critique of Western development strategies and the technologies associated with them.¹ This led me to further reading, initially regarding Galtung’s treatment of technology and development,² and later including aspects of his theory and practice of peace research/peace studies.³

Galtung’s work addresses, in a creative and insightful way, the central global problems of our era. Understood as broadly as he conceived them, the “peace problem” and the “development problem” encompass many of the most important and fundamental challenges that continue to confront us in this century. For me as a teenager, his critical discussion of development and technology was illuminating: it offered, for the first time, a coherent conception of concerns that were already familiar, including problems of economic and social inequality as well as the need for ecological sustainability. Development, Galtung argued, should be understood, contrary to the prevailing Western tradition, as the satisfaction of basic material and non-material human needs, subject to the maintenance of ecological balance.² Galtung’s critique also provided an informative standpoint from which to evaluate specific technologies and to appraise technological change.

Contemporary Relevance

Galtung’s claim that a technology is a “carrier of the genetic code of the society that produced it”,² in that it both embodies and reinforces prevailing social norms and assumptions, has been well supported in my subsequent engagements with the emerging information and communication technology revolution. Decisions are influenced as much by social considerations, whether intentionally or not, than by the capabilities and limitations of what is technically achievable. New technologies continue to reflect the norms and priorities of the culture giving rise to them. Surveillance capitalism and the values underpinning contemporary social media are a prominent illustration, among many others, of Galtung’s point. A more subtle example can be found in the superficial acceptance of the desirability of making information and communication technologies accessible to people with disabilities, while limiting the extent to which this can be achieved by prioritizing the established values of the culture in the technical choices made, for example by initially designing a product without regard to users with disabilities and later making, at best, only the changes needed to achieve the regulatory minimum standard of access. In such a case, the final product begrudgingly and often inadequately accommodates people with disabilities, but prioritizes release schedules, profit maximization, or other factors emphasized in the cultural norms that ultimately drive technical decisions. This strategy of technological development also coincides with the view that only the majority of users, or the average user, ultimately matter; those with disabilities are of lesser value and their needs are seen as less deserving, in keeping with a long-established, ableist social hierarchy.

Equally, it requires only a cursory assessment of the news of the day to discover that the peace problem remains acutely important, and that what Galtung refers to as “direct violence” is far too frequently the first response of political actors, whether operating at the international, national or local levels. Galtung’s approach treats direct forms of violence as the products of deeper conflicts brought about by established social relations and cultural norms, thus introducing his notions of “structural violence” and “cultural violence”. Indeed, he characterizes violence very broadly as a preventable difference between an actual realization and a potential realization.⁴ It is not my purpose to give an analysis or a critical response to these concepts here, but instead to acknowledge the role he accords to them in explaining the indisputably violent acts - the incidents of “direct violence” - perpetrated by parties to conflicts. What is needed, by contrast, and as Galtung maintains, is more than a mere cessation of the direct violence, but a “peace culture” capable of sustaining the positive resolution of conflict. The theory and practice of peace studies is meant to facilitate this outcome.

What is needed

I agree with Galtung that there is a need for a social science-based research program that seeks to build the theory and practice of conflict resolution “by peaceful means”. I also acknowledge the centrality of the “development problem” as he characterizes it. Granted, a different philosophical approach may be preferable, for example a conception grounded in notions of human rights or of capabilities.⁵ However, disagreement over the normative foundations does nothing to lessen the importance, in both theoretical and practical respects, of instituting social change to make progress toward solving a problem that has all too concrete and readily apparent manifestations in the world as it presently operates. Again, we need to continue to build relevant normative and empirical theories that stand in a mutually informing and supportive relationship with practice.

In my view, the peace problem and the development problem (or a differently founded conception that addresses the same concrete concerns) should also inform proposals for changing the norms, practices and institutions that determine social and political decisions. Specifically, I would argue, evolving theories and conceptions of these problems should influence proposals for social change and guide institutional reform. In the second half of the twentieth century and extending into the twenty-first, the international human rights tradition has enabled a degree of progress in this direction, but, as an acquaintance with the challenges of our current world never ceases to remind us, much more work remains for researchers and practitioners to do.