Peace studies ignores violence
Peace studies has become the academic discipline most committed to not understanding violence. By focusing on conflict resolution and positive peace, the field systematically ignores the violence that creates and maintains the conditions it studies.
──── The definitional sleight of hand
Peace studies defines violence so narrowly that most actual violence disappears from analysis.
Direct violence gets attention—wars, murders, assaults. These are visible, dramatic, and politically safe to condemn.
Structural violence gets acknowledged in theory but avoided in practice. When poverty, inequality, and institutional oppression are treated as “violence,” the term becomes so broad it loses analytical precision.
Foundational violence is completely ignored. The violence that establishes property relations, legal systems, and state authority is rendered invisible by treating existing institutions as natural baselines.
This definitional framework allows peace researchers to study “peace” while ignoring the violence that makes their peaceful societies possible.
──── Academic violence avoidance
Peace studies departments systematically select against scholars who analyze violence seriously.
Hiring committees prefer candidates who focus on “constructive” topics like mediation, dialogue, and reconciliation. Scholars who examine how violence functions structurally get labeled as “too negative” or “not solutions-oriented.”
Grant funding flows toward projects that promise to reduce conflict, not toward research that might reveal how conflict serves essential social functions.
The field has created institutional incentives to avoid understanding the very phenomenon it claims to study.
──── The positive peace trap
“Positive peace” research focuses on building just and sustainable societies while ignoring how existing peaceful societies were built and are maintained.
Scandinavian countries are celebrated as positive peace exemplars without examining the colonial extraction and military force that created their wealth. Switzerland’s neutrality is praised without analyzing how banking secrecy enables global violence. Canada’s peaceful reputation is studied without confronting indigenous genocide.
Positive peace research treats successful violence as if it never happened, studying only the peaceful aftermath while ignoring the violent foundation.
──── Conflict resolution ideology
Conflict resolution assumes that violence results from misunderstanding, poor communication, or inadequate institutions. This framework systematically misses conflicts where violence serves rational interests.
Labor disputes are treated as communication problems rather than zero-sum resource conflicts. Colonial resistance is analyzed through reconciliation frameworks that ignore ongoing extraction. Police violence is addressed through training programs that ignore police function.
The field cannot acknowledge that some conflicts are irreconcilable without fundamental power restructuring because such acknowledgment would undermine the conflict resolution industry.
──── The NGO-academic complex
Peace studies is deeply integrated with the nonprofit industrial complex, creating structural bias against analysis that might threaten funding sources.
NGOs depend on foundation grants that prefer “neutral” conflict resolution over structural analysis. Academic peace programs rely on partnerships with international organizations that benefit from current power arrangements.
Research topics get selected based on what will attract funding, not what might advance understanding of peace and violence. The field has become professionally invested in not understanding how violence works.
──── Historical sanitization
Peace studies systematically misrepresents how historical peace was achieved.
The post-WWII international order is celebrated as a triumph of international law and cooperation while ignoring the massive violence that created and maintains it. European integration is studied as peaceful economic cooperation while ignoring the colonial violence that funded it.
Civil rights progress is analyzed through nonviolent resistance frameworks while downplaying the role of urban uprisings, international pressure, and economic disruption in forcing change.
This sanitized history makes current peaceful arrangements seem natural and stable rather than contingent on ongoing violence.
──── Methodological violence blindness
Peace studies research methods are designed to avoid seeing violence.
Survey research asks people about their attitudes toward peace and conflict without examining the structural conditions that shape those attitudes. Case study analysis focuses on dramatic conflicts while ignoring the everyday violence that maintains normal social relations.
Quantitative peace research measures battle deaths and treaty signings without capturing the violence embedded in property relations, legal systems, and market mechanisms.
The field’s methodological toolkit systematically filters out the violence that makes peaceful societies possible.
──── State violence normalization
Peace studies treats state monopoly on legitimate violence as the foundation of peace rather than as institutionalized violence.
Police violence is treated as excessive force rather than as the essential function of law enforcement. Military spending is analyzed as a resource allocation problem rather than as preparation for violence. Prison systems are studied as criminal justice institutions rather than as violence management systems.
By normalizing state violence as the baseline for social order, peace studies makes invisible the violence that maintains peaceful societies.
──── International relations capture
Peace studies in international relations focuses on interstate war while ignoring the violence of the international system itself.
Free trade agreements are treated as peaceful economic cooperation rather than as structural adjustment violence. International monetary systems are analyzed as coordination mechanisms rather than as extraction systems. Humanitarian intervention is studied as conflict resolution rather than as imperial violence.
The field cannot acknowledge that the international system is itself a violence system because that would undermine the entire framework of liberal internationalism.
──── Therapeutic violence avoidance
Peace studies increasingly adopts therapeutic frameworks that focus on healing trauma rather than analyzing its causes.
Restorative justice programs address individual harm while leaving intact the systems that produce systematic harm. Trauma-informed approaches help people cope with violence while avoiding analysis of why the violence continues.
Mindfulness and meditation are promoted as peace practices while ignoring the structural conditions that create the stress and conflict they’re meant to address.
This therapeutic turn allows peace studies to appear helpful while avoiding political analysis that might threaten existing power arrangements.
──── The professionalization trap
Peace studies has become a professional field with career incentives that discourage serious analysis of violence.
Career advancement requires publications in peace journals that prefer optimistic, solutions-oriented research. Conference presentations favor success stories and best practices over structural analysis. Consulting opportunities flow toward scholars who can help organizations manage conflict without challenging fundamental arrangements.
The field has created professional incentives that reward scholars for not understanding violence too deeply.
──── Alternative analytical frameworks
Understanding peace requires analyzing the violence that creates and maintains it.
Historical materialism examines how violent processes of accumulation create the wealth that enables peaceful societies. Decolonial analysis reveals how ongoing colonial violence maintains global hierarchies that appear peaceful from imperial centers.
Abolitionist frameworks analyze how carceral violence maintains social order that appears peaceful to those who benefit from it. Ecological analysis examines how violence against non-human nature enables human societies that appear internally peaceful.
These frameworks reveal that what peace studies calls “peace” is often violence rendered invisible through normalization and distance.
──── The measurement problem
Peace studies cannot measure what it refuses to acknowledge exists.
Peace indices measure absence of war rather than presence of justice. Conflict databases count battle deaths but not structural casualties. Peace rankings favor wealthy countries that export their violence rather than poor countries that suffer it.
The field’s metrics systematically miscount violence by treating violence that maintains peaceful societies as non-violence.
──── Academic complicity
Peace studies serves power by making violence invisible while appearing to oppose it.
The field provides moral legitimacy for violent systems by focusing on managing their worst excesses rather than challenging their foundations. It channels dissent into academic careers and NGO jobs rather than political action.
Peace studies functions as managed opposition that contains critique within acceptable bounds.
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Peace studies ignores violence because seriously analyzing violence would reveal that peaceful societies depend on violence for their existence. The field cannot acknowledge this dependence without undermining its own legitimacy.
The question isn’t whether peace studies should study violence. The question is whether a field that systematically avoids understanding violence can contribute anything meaningful to creating actual peace.
Real peace analysis would start with the recognition that current peaceful arrangements rest on massive violence, and that creating genuine peace requires confronting and transforming that violence rather than managing and concealing it.