Johan Vincent Galtung (24 October 1930 – 17 February 2024) was a Norwegian sociologist and the principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies.

Furthermore, it was revealed (October 2024) that Galtung was not given any treatment whatsoever in Stabekk Helsehus from 2 to 17 February, 2024, even though he repeatedly expressed he wanted to live.

degree, Galtung moved to Columbia University, in New York City, where he taught for five semesters as an assistant professor in the department of sociology.

[9] Galtung was the director general of the International University Centre in Dubrovnik and helped to found and lead the World Future Studies Federation.

[15] Economist and fellow peace researcher Kenneth Boulding has said of Galtung that his "output is so large and so varied that it is hard to believe that it comes from a human".

Structural violence is increased in situations where low income individuals also suffer in the rank dimensions of education, health, and power.

Akhil Gupta argued in 2012[22] that structural violence has been the key influence in the nature and distribution of extreme suffering in India, driven by the Indian state in its alleged corruption, overly bureaucratic standards of governance used to exclude the middle and working classes from the political system through a system of politicized poverty.

Jacklyn Cock's 1989 paper[23] in the Review of African Political Economy applied Galtung's theory of structural violence, analysing the role of militarized society under the apartheid regime of South Africa in the development of patriarchal values that is a form of structural violence against women.

Cock found that tacit misdirection of women in society by its leadership focused their energies toward the direct and indirect incorporation of the patriarchal regime in order to maintain the status quo.

This concept has been applied in a limited number of cases, with most occurring after Galtung's follow up paper in 1990,[25] some of the most notable of which are listed below.

He has framed Zionism within his broader theories of structural and cultural violence, suggesting that the establishment and actions of the state of Israel have contributed to ongoing conflict and suffering in the region.

In Enduring Violence: Ladina Women's Lives in Guatemala,[27] the 2011 book by Cecilia Menjívar, it is argued that the preexisting cultural conditions of mediania, or half and half, agriculture led to women facing large scale cultural violence due to high rents, low returns and high required investment with additionally harsh conditions due to the conflict in Guatemala.

Given the patriarchal culture of Guatemala, any earnings would go to the partner of the working woman, leaving a large poverty gap enshrined in the demographic diversity of the country.

A 2011 paper[29] by the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) demonstrated the widespread nature of child marriage in South Asia.

Chandler argues this is due to opposition within the group to harming Lebanese civilians, who they view as "their own", or exacerbating conflict through civil war.

In 2005, Steven Wright made the case[31] for Peacekeeping efforts to be regarded as violence due to increasing use of techniques such as pre-interrogation treatment, and the use of non-lethal weapons such as tear gas for crowd dispersal and plastic bullets, which he terms "torture-lite", being increasingly common in peacekeeping manuals across a number of nation-states and supranational organisations.

Galtung uses a positivist approach,[33] in that he assumes that every rational tenet of the theory can be verified, serving to reject social processes beyond relationships and actions.

Galtung also wields an explicit normative orientation in the paper, in which there is a weighting toward evaluative statements that may show bias or simply opinion, or indeed a trend toward the institutions and concepts of peace in the West, which may serve to limit the applicability of the model more widely.

Galtung is strongly associated with the following concepts: In 1973, Galtung criticised the "structural fascism" of the US and other Western countries that make war to secure materials and markets, stating: "Such an economic system is called capitalism, and when it's spread in this way to other countries it's called imperialism", and praised Fidel Castro's Cuba in 1972 for "break[ing] free of imperialism's iron grip".

[35] Galtung recommended that people should read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination.

[41] In defending his claims that Jews control American media companies, Galtung cited an article published by National Vanguard, a neo-Nazi organization.

[41] Asked by NRK about his controversial remarks, Galtung reiterated his recommendation that people should read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

[41] The Israeli newspaper Haaretz accused Galtung in May 2012 of antisemitism for (1) suggesting the possibility of a link between the 2011 Norway attacks and Israel's intelligence agency Mossad; (2) maintaining that "six Jewish companies" control 96% of world media; (3) identifying what he contends are ironic similarities between the banking firm Goldman Sachs and the conspiratorial antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and (4) theorizing, although not justified, antisemitism in post–World War I Germany was a predictable consequence of German Jews holding influential positions.

[43] On 8 August 2012, the World Peace Academy in Basel, Switzerland announced it was suspending Galtung from its organization, citing what it posited were his "reckless and offensive statements to questions that are specifically sensitive for Jews.