Violence, Poverty and Peace: What’s the Connection?

As the new year unfolds, it seems our world is snared in a cycle of violence. We are confronted daily with stories and images of violence, from newsfeeds of global conflicts to local incidents of violent crime, to violence within the home. If we are to imagine a way out of this web of conflict, it is important to think critically about the roots of such violence and what makes for peace.

What is violence? According to Johan Galtung, one of the world’s leading thinkers on violence and peace, violence is present whenever people are prevented from reaching their full potential due to factors that are avoidable. This may be the result of physical violence where harm is done to the body. Equally, it may be the result of psychological violence, the kind that operates on the soul.

Sometimes violence is direct and personal where an identifiable perpetrator knowingly and willingly exacts harm on another. This is the form of violence we typically see on the news. Often, however, violence is less obvious, embedded in the way our systems function. Galtung calls this “structural violence”, present when systems intentionally or unintentionally exclude people and diminish their potential. Structural violence could include discriminatory policies or practices that restrict access to goods, services or employment, for example.

Lastly, Galtung asserts, there is “cultural violence”. Cultural violence includes “those aspects of culture that can be used to justify or legitimize direct or structural violence.”[1] Recently, an Alberta government official opined about “unsustainable mass immigration”, asking the question “Why import from nations with failed systems when our Judeo-Christian heritage and principles have worked so well here?”[2]

While the narrative of the “failed” society is now being used to justify restrictions on immigration, it is also the core narrative of colonization and the subjugation of Indigenous cultures and fuel for the fires of global wars. This is cultural violence; the kind that justifies the exclusion of certain people from social, economic and political life; the kind that creates refugees; the kind that breeds poverty.

Poverty is violence. Poverty exists precisely where people are prevented from reaching their full potential due to factors that are avoidable. Wars that kill, maim, traumatize and displace millions are obviously violent. Economic policies that prioritize investments over people, leaving them homeless are also violent. Discriminatory practices that reward some and exclude others on the basis of their gender, race, sexual orientation or ability are violent. And cultural narratives and stereotypes that justify that violence based on antiquated notions of failed societies and Judeo-Christian superiority are violent. These are the roots of poverty.

If poverty is violence, the path to peace leads us through the valley of poverty. Just as there are different forms of violence, Galtung also proposes different types of peace. In its simplest form, peace is an absence of violence. He calls this “negative peace”. But true peace is deeper than that. To get at the roots of violence, he says we must also work diligently for “positive peace”. This deeper form of peace comes to be when we have also eradicated structural violence along with those aspects of our culture that undermine the rights and dignity of the other and legitimize the violence against them.

Understood in this way, our task is less to “fix” poverty and more to “heal” it. As a form of violence, poverty is also woundedness. Healing that wound demands that we examine the ideas that allow it to breed in our systems and consciousness. It demands us to confront the spectres of cultural and structural violence. Such is the path to positive peace, an end to poverty, and healing for us all.

[1] Galtung, Johan (1990). “Cultural Violence” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 27, No. 3. (Aug., 1990), pp. 291-30

[2] https://globalnews.ca/news/11674680/alberta-government-accused-weaponizing-immigration-to-win-votes/