Concept of Peace in Peace Studies: A Short Historical Sketch

This paper attempts to trace the development of the concept of peace in peace studies, by an examination of studies on the peace concept and definitions of peace by peace researchers, from two perspectives of peace value and peace sphere. It shows that the concept of peace employed in peace studies has been expanded both in peace value and peace sphere to include more than one peace value and peace sphere. Introduction In the present paper, I would like to attempt, as it were, a “peace study” on “peace discourse” or more precisely on “discourse on peace in peace studies.” As Johan Galtung once argued, “an important task in peace research has always been and always be the exploration of the concept of peace” (Galtung 1981: 183). In spite of Galtung’s appeal, there seem to have been few studies on peace concept worthy of note. The present paper is intended to be a small step along the path proposed by Galtung. What I attempt is to trace the development of the concept of peace employed in peace studies since its birth around 1960. More specifically, I will examine how peace has been conceptualized and defined in peace studies, and what concept of peace has been employed, and then, on the basis of the examination, show that the concept of peace has been expanded into a more complex concept both in its content and in its scope. In the examination, two perspectives of peace value and peace sphere are introduced and employed as key criteria to analyze the conceptualization of peace and measure the complexity of the concept of peace. In studies on peace concept or peace image, two facets of the concept of peace have come to be distinguished, though not always explicitly. These are what are called “peace value” and “peace sphere” (or sphere of peace). The distinction was first explicitly proposed by Matsuo (1984) and Matsuo (1985), though several previous studies hinted at the distinction. The former, “peace value,” refers to the content or substance of peace. It can be viewed as the component of peace. In contrast, the latter, “peace sphere,” which was, as we will see shortly below, proposed first by Johan