Why do we call a war “violent” but rarely use that word for a child who dies of preventable hunger? Both result in lost lives, yet our instinct is to reserve the label “violence” for the visible blow, the gunshot, or the riot. The Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung challenged this narrow understanding and built a framework that helps us see violence in all its forms. His typology of violence remains one of the most influential tools in peace and conflict studies, helping students and scholars understand not just the violence we see, but the violence built into the systems and beliefs that surround us.
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The man who redefined violence
Johan Galtung is widely regarded as the father of peace studies. He founded the Peace Research Institute Oslo in 1959 and established the Journal of Peace Research in 1964. In 1969, he was appointed to the world’s first professorship in peace and conflict studies at the University of Oslo. His work fundamentally reshaped how academics and policymakers think about both peace and violence.
Before Galtung, violence was largely understood in physical terms, an act committed by one person against another. Galtung found this definition far too limited. In his landmark 1969 article “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research,” he proposed a much broader definition. He argued that violence is present when human beings are influenced so that their actual physical and mental realisations fall below their potential. In simpler terms, violence is anything that stops a person from becoming what they could otherwise be.
This expanded definition was no accident of timing. The decades after World War II saw rapid modernization, the decolonization of dozens of nations, and growing attention to the deep grievances of newly independent and marginalized peoples. Scholars increasingly recognized that suffering was not caused only by soldiers and weapons but also by poverty, exploitation, and entrenched inequality. Galtung’s framework gave a vocabulary to this realization.
The violence triangle
Galtung organized his thinking into what he called the violence triangle, with three interconnected forms at its corners: direct, structural, and cultural violence. He divided these into the visible and the invisible. Direct violence is visible, while structural and cultural violence operate beneath the surface, often unnoticed. Understanding this triangle is the key to grasping his entire contribution.
Direct violence: the visible blow
Direct violence is the form most people immediately recognize. It involves an identifiable actor who intentionally causes harm to a clear victim. There is a perpetrator, an object, and an act of harm linking them. Killing, assault, torture, bullying, and sexual violence all fall into this category.
Galtung noted that direct violence can be physical or psychological. Physical violence includes acts like beating or maiming, while psychological violence covers threats, indoctrination, and verbal abuse. In the Indian context, mob lynchings, communal riots, and physical attacks on Dalits asserting their rights are clear examples of direct violence. The defining feature is that the harm is intentional and the perpetrator can be named.
Because direct violence is so visible, it dominates news headlines and public attention. Yet Galtung warned that focusing only on this form gives us an incomplete and even misleading picture of how suffering is actually produced in the world.
Structural violence: harm without a single villain
Structural violence is perhaps Galtung’s most important and original contribution. This form of violence is embedded in the very structures of society, in its economic systems, political institutions, and social arrangements. There is no single person pulling the trigger. Instead, the harm is built into the system itself, distributing resources, opportunities, and power so unequally that some groups are systematically prevented from meeting their basic needs.
Galtung pointed to institutionalized racism, sexism, and classism as classic examples. Consider a society where some children attend well-funded schools while others receive almost no education, where some communities enjoy clean water and quality healthcare while others suffer preventable disease. No individual decided to harm these people, yet the structure produces real, measurable damage to their lives.
The caste system offers one of the most enduring illustrations of structural violence. When a Dalit student is denied quality education because of social prejudice, or when entire communities are pushed into hazardous work like manual scavenging because of their birth, the harm flows from the structure itself. The intergenerational poverty that results is not the act of one cruel individual but the cumulative product of an unequal social order. The tragic case of Chuni Kotal, the first graduate from the Lodha Sabar community who died by suicide in 1992 after years of caste-based exclusion in education and employment, shows how structural violence can be every bit as deadly as a physical attack.
Gender inequality functions similarly. When inheritance laws, marriage customs, and social expectations systematically disadvantage women, they experience structural violence even in the absence of any physical assault. The damage is invisible precisely because we have learned to see it as normal.
Cultural violence: the violence that says “this is right”
Two decades after introducing structural violence, Galtung completed his triangle. In his 1990 article “Cultural Violence,” he defined this third form as any aspect of a culture that can be used to legitimize violence in its direct or structural form. Cultural violence is the layer of beliefs, ideologies, religious interpretations, language, and symbols that makes the other two forms of violence appear acceptable, natural, or even right.
Galtung explained that cultural violence makes direct and structural violence “look or feel right,” or at least not wrong. It does not kill or maim directly. Instead, it changes the moral colour of an act from wrong to acceptable. Think of an ideology that claims one race or caste is naturally superior to another. That belief, by itself, harms no one physically. But it provides the justification that allows discrimination and exploitation to continue unchallenged.
In India, certain interpretations of religion have historically been used to present caste hierarchy as divinely ordained rather than as a human-made social arrangement. When discrimination is framed as part of the cosmic order, those who suffer under it, and even those who benefit, come to accept it as inevitable. Media and education can reinforce this. When films repeatedly portray particular communities in a negative light, or when textbooks minimize the contributions of marginalized groups, they shape attitudes that uphold inequality.
Galtung described cultural violence as the most insidious and longest-lasting layer of the triangle. It forms the foundation that sustains everything above it, rendering inequality natural and oppression acceptable through myths, ideologies, and shared narratives.
How the three forms feed each other
The real power of Galtung’s typology lies in showing that these three forms of violence are not separate boxes but a deeply interconnected system. They reinforce one another in what Galtung called a vicious cycle.
The causal flow often moves from the invisible to the visible. Galtung argued that structural and cultural violence are the sources of invisible conflict, which can then erupt into visible direct violence. Cultural violence supplies the justification. Structural violence creates the unequal conditions and the simmering grievances. When those grievances reach a breaking point, they can explode into riots, communal clashes, or other forms of direct violence.
The practice of manual scavenging illustrates this interlocking dynamic clearly. Cultural violence, through caste ideology, justifies why certain communities should perform this degrading work. Structural violence keeps those communities trapped in poverty with few alternatives. And direct violence appears whenever members of these communities are attacked for trying to break free of their assigned place. Pull on any one thread and you find the other two attached.
Galtung also warned of a subtle process he called the “sanitation of language.” Over time, massive structural violence gets relabelled as mere “discrimination” and massive cultural violence as mere “prejudice.” These softer words make the underlying violence easier to ignore. He pointed out that this very softening of language is itself a form of cultural violence.
From violence to peace
Galtung’s typology was never meant only to diagnose suffering. It was built to point the way toward peace. His expanded definition of violence led directly to an expanded definition of peace. He distinguished between negative peace, the mere absence of direct violence, and positive peace, the absence of structural and cultural violence as well.
A ceasefire that stops the shooting achieves negative peace. But if poverty, discrimination, and the ideologies that justify them remain intact, the underlying violence continues and conflict is likely to return. Galtung identified positive peace largely with social justice, the creation of equitable structures and inclusive cultural narratives.
This is why his framework matters so much for understanding human security. Achieving lasting peace requires addressing all three corners of the triangle. We must reform unjust structures, transform the cultural narratives that legitimize them, and prevent direct harm. Tackling only the visible violence while leaving the invisible foundations untouched simply allows the cycle to begin again. Affirmative action programmes, such as reservations in education and employment for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, can be understood as attempts to dismantle structural violence and move toward this fuller, positive peace.
Why this framework still matters
Galtung’s typology has been applied to conflicts and injustices across the world since 1969, and it continues to shape peace and conflict studies today. It is not without criticism. Some scholars argue that his definitions of violence are so broad that almost any social problem can be labelled violence, which can blur the concept’s analytical sharpness. Yet even critics acknowledge that the framework forces us to look beyond the obvious and to question what we have come to accept as normal.
For students of human security, the lesson is profound. Violence is not only the dramatic event that interrupts the news. It is also the quiet, daily denial of dignity, opportunity, and potential that millions experience as ordinary life. By naming the invisible forms of violence, Galtung made it possible to confront them.
What do you think? Can you identify an everyday practice in your own surroundings that might be a form of structural or cultural violence, even though most people consider it perfectly normal? And if positive peace requires transforming the beliefs that justify inequality, where do you think that transformation should begin, in our laws, our classrooms, or our culture?
References
- https://www.prio.org/
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002234336900600301
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence
- https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/structural-violence-casteism
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022343390027003005
- https://www.transcend.org/tms/2024/07/johan-galtung-positive-and-negative-peace/
- https://blogs.gwu.edu/ccas-panamericanos/peace-studies-wiki/peace-studies-wiki/approaches-to-peace/negative-and-positive-peace-framework/
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