Browsing: Johan Galtung

Professor Johan Galtung was one of the founders of Futures Studies and Peace Studies, and a monumental figure in both fields. Galtung recently passed away at the age of 93, but leaves behind a legacy of prolific scholarship and practice that is sure to endure for many generations. We at JFS would like to pay tribute to him.

Personal Tributes to Galtung

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, at the intersection of millennia, Johan Galtung wrote that we are leaving behind a century with a horrible reputation for violence and a dismal track record. Billions were negatively impacted by violence in the 20th century, but fortunately, there were also some “shining lights” outlining different possibilities for the future. Galtung himself proposed a vision for the future to address our pathology of violence: alternative territorial and non-territorial systems that could easily confederate into circles of cooperation instead of competition and war-mongering. As we revisit Galtung’s article “Leaving Behind a Century of Violence” to pay tribute to his work, perhaps we could ponder how far away or how much further apart we currently find ourselves. How distant or near is the future where “the sky’s the limit” if we collectively develop the courage to hope?

– Ivana Milojevic

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The Peace Trinity
(In Memory of Professor Johan Galtung)

Trinity holds sway on the Earth,
Of examples there’s no dearth.
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Anitya, Duhkha, Anatman course,
Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva here
Are Generator, Operator and Destroyer.
Divine threes induce political trios
Marx, Engels and Lenin ethos.
Political threesomes beget economic tri
Where everything’s measured three by;
Classic PDC to Contemporary LPG,
The story of Northern Domination Trilogy.
Peace too has a trinity
That may go into eternity.
Three G’s have no faulting:
God, Gandhi and Galtung.
Generator, Operator and Destroyer, GOD,
That’s Conflict, life and future goad.
Peace we need and not pieces,
Progress as Nature pleases.
End never Justifies the means,
Truth never comes from evil deeds.
Eye for an Eye makes no sense,
As all of it will become nonsense.
All these Gandhian dictums
Inspire Galtungian theorems:
Peace from peaceful means,
With DPT peaceworker builds.
Transcend conflict by all means,
Dialogue and negotiate all needs.
Peace does not befall on you
Seek for it and strive for it,
Stand to gain from all of it
Of the three G-formula
GOD, Gandhi and Galtung:
Go, Get, Grow!
****
[PDC: Production, Distribution, Consumption
LPG: Liberalization, Privatization, Globalization
DPT: Diagnosis, Prognosis, Therapy]

– S. P. Udayakumaran

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Johan Galtung: Macrohistorian, Futurist, Peace Theorist

Because of the graciousness of Jim Dator and the World Futures Studies Federation I was fortunate to have spent over a decade in close contact with Johan Galtung. He spent much of the 1980s in Honolulu, Hawaii, running seminars at the University. I was working for the Hawaii Judiciary then as a futurist, and in 1987, Galtung became my advisor for my doctoral dissertation.

His skill, given he was a speaker of at least ten languages, was his ability to take complex ideas and communicate them in ways that the reader, the listener, could easily understand. When I first heard him speak on his structural theory of imperialism, I immediately understood why the poor – those in the periphery – related more to the elite, the center within their own regions, instead of with the periphery, and the periphery of the periphery, the downtrodden globally. I used his approach and wrote a piece on the futures of Hawaii; how the islands were peripheral in their development with capital flowing outwards to the US Mainland and Japan.

When I was taking him to lectures in Hawaii – Hawaii state government, the Hawaii Judiciary – I asked how he could deliver to so many groups without any anxiety. He looked at me and said: “the first 1000 times were difficult.” I understood clearly: practice, practice, and practice.

To practice, I knew I needed to read. Once when he was engaged in pedagogy, I reminded Galtung that I had read all his books. He laughed and said that could not be true. Then he smiled and said, “what about a structural theory of revolutions.“ It was my turn to laugh, and I said, “you mean the small red book.”

But it was in 1987 that our connection grew stronger. I showed him some of my publications, he instantly challenged me asking where will this lead to? I immediately enrolled in the doctoral program. There were no course requirements but when Galtung offered a course on Macrohistory in 1987, I enrolled. The eight of us in that course became close friends. Galtung was the professor but also a friend, inviting us all to his home for many dinners. I still stay in touch with some of the participants, particularly Otto Scharmer. That course was a life-changing event, and we would then go on to publish a book from that learning journey, Macrohistory and Macrohistorians.

Dator was the chair of my program but as the focus was on history, Galtung took the brunt of the work. When I submitted my doctoral proposal. He looked at it and threw it in the garbage. He said, you are selling your topic short. Instead, he suggested I engage in comparative history and epistemology. From that, my PhD became, Understanding Sarkar: The Indian episteme, Macrohistory, and Transformative Knowledge. At Galtung’s insistence, I compared Sarkar with the other greats in human history (Ibn Khaldun, Vico, Marx, Hegel, Sorokin, and more). But his toughness was minor compared to his generosity. When I gave him my 120,000-word thesis, instead of balking at the length, he read a chapter daily, and called me every evening with words of congratulation. When others criticized my focus on Sarkar, he said simply: send them more chapters – they don’t know what they don’t know.

His work was also pivotal in using dialectics to understand the emerging future. While my professor in Philosophy 101 at the University of Hawaii in 1975 suggested that if you are unable to think dialectically you are unable to think at all, Galtung argued the more contradictions an entity has the less likely it can survive. He could thus in 1982 argue with confidence that the Soviet Union would collapse within a decade – the contradictions were too great, the system not adaptive enough. By the year 2000, he made a similar prediction about the US and capitalism, that it too displayed too many contradictions to survive. I use this approach in futures-proofing, that is, reduce contradictions in any system and then thrivability is more likely.

After we both left Hawaii, I was fortunate to meet Galtung many times around the world – in Trier, Taipei, Turku, Budapest, Barcelona, Brisbane, Mooloolaba, Seattle, and elsewhere – over the past few decades. I still remember how his words transformed the Asia Pacific Mayors Forum in Brisbane. When asked about his image of the future city – instead of the usual mantra of the smart city, he said, the city should be like the amazon jungle: green, living, growing, transforming: alive. His words impacted the few hundred delegates and the hundred plus Mayors. Of course, one Mayor protested, saying he just wanted more roads and cars.

In Taipei at the first international futures conference at Tamkang University, he gave a powerful talk on the nine Chinas, suggesting that peace was possible, if China moved toward a confederation, a pluralistic model. Galtung was unique in that along with theories of power, he always focused on possibilities and designs of change, as well as on peaceful strategies. Peace was not just the preferred future but the path as well. He had been inspired by Gandhi, the Buddha, and the world philosopher P.R. Sarkar.

Along with fascination with macrohistory and the future, Galtung’s work was instrumental in the development of CLA. His map of peace having three levels, direct violence (litany), structural violence (system) and cultural violence (worldview) is the core of CLA. I merely added myth and metaphor, which I learned from William Irwin Thompson.

He, along with Jim Dator, were directly involved in me moving to Brisbane. I had applied for a post-doctoral fellowship at Queensland University of Technology. The intent was to work with Tony Stevenson at the Communication Centre and help with the move of the World Futures Studies Federation there. However, the university only gave post-docs to those who had a PhD in the sciences. Luckily one of the committee members had read Galtung, and when he saw the reference from him, they awarded me the fellowship,

There are some speakers I never tire of listening to – Galtung was one of them. While not a comedian, he was able to keep the audience mesmerized through humorous references to historical world thinkers. I am not sad, for Johan lived his life purpose and helped countless with their life purpose. I am truly appreciative of his life work and the many gifts he gave me and others.

– Sohail Inayatullah

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Johan Galtung made a distinct and lasting contribution to my thinking and practice. I briefly met him in Taiwan, at Tamkang University in 2000 at the New Futures conference, when I was just beginning my journey in futures studies. I later saw him speak in 2005 at Melbourne University’s International Peace Centre then run by Di Bretherton. Aside from being analytically brilliant, he was a very entertaining and actually funny and self-effacing speaker. I remember he made a joke in which he described dropping his phone in a lake, after which he started cursing against US imperialism, only to step back and decide that maybe it wasn’t US imperialism which had destroyed his phone in that instance. Moments like this, where someone can laugh at themselves but also reveal their own worldviews and biases, taught me what integrity means as an intellectual. I learned a lot from his intellectual achievements. In particular his book, Macrohistory and Macrohistorians, co-edited with Sohail Inayatullah, was mind blowing and profound, and really helped to deepen my understanding of social change. In addition, his structural theory of imperialism was a strong foundation in understanding how imperialism operates, which influenced the direction of my doctoral work. I cannot count how many times I’ve cited this work. However it’s his methodological contributions which really lasted with me, which I continue to use in my work. The transcend method, which describes how conflict can be transcended through mutual benefit rather than win lose compromise, changed my thinking about the nature and futures of conflict. More fundamentally, however, was his contradictions based scenario approach. After reading The fall of the US Empire: and then what? I understood that contradictions were fundamental to the futures of social systems. The more contradictions a system has the more susceptible they are to collapse. He used his intellectual gifts to fight and struggle for and to create a more peaceful and just world. His approach provided a new lens to analyze and understand social futures, which I use to this day. I’m grateful to him for his many gifts, sacrifices and contributions.

– José Ramos

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I had the pleasure and privilege of lunching with Galtung in Copenhagen in the mid-90s. He and some Nobel prize winners and other academic luminaries sat on some panel in the royal uni festive hall. When he saw me at the main break, he said “get me out of here,” and something else that indicated he did not suffer fools easily, at least not on that day. So I got him a nice lunch and a couple of beers at one of that city’s innumerable cozy eating places. We had such a great time that I think he was late for the panel’s afternoon session. At our meeting he was most unconditional in his hurrays for the socioeconomic theory of Prout and its propounder P.R. Sarkar–he offered “I love Prout and Sarkar”, and that the monthly we published at the time, Global Times (a title later nicked by China), was essential to his clippings archives (we used to send him a free copy). I thought him brilliant and most generous. He was a man of extraordinary comprehension and rich human touch.

– Trond Överland

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Galtung’s contribution over his lifetime to peace theory, peace practice, peace learning and critical futures thinking was outstanding. I am reminded of one his key observations about working for ‘peace by peaceful means’, and not uncritically assuming that the answer to the peace puzzle lies in ‘preparing for peace by preparing for war’. He leaves an important legacy. In peace…

– Frank Hutchinson

If you have a tribute you would like to contribute please email jose@actionforesight.net

Johan Galtung’s JFS contributions: 

Leaving Behind a Century of Violence (May 2000)

The Six Chinas (May 2001)

To End Terrorism, End State Terrorism (November 2002)

There are alternatives! And resistance is possible. (August 2003)

The Middle East: Building Blocks For Peace (November 2006)

The World System: A Life Cycle Discourse. (May 2007)

The State of the World (August 2007)