Peace as Liberation: Visions and Praxis from Below

Violence is a central problem of Peace Psychology. The discipline seeks to identify, understand, explain, and mitigate multiple forms of direct and indirect violence. It conceives peace as “the absence of violence.” Galtung (1969) conceptualizes violence as conditions that undermine human beings’ ability to realize their full potential. Peace, in this sense, refers to the conditions that allow human beings to be fully human, free to live up to their full potential. Conversely, the conditions that make some human beings less human than others are conditions of violence.