Yuri van Hoef

Friendship as Positive Peace: A New Agenda for Peace and Conflict Studies

This article argues that studying friendship can be a valuable resource for studying positive peace. Studying positive peace is currently a great lacunae within Peace and Conflict Studies, which traditionally has focused almost solely on negative peace (the absence of war). To that end, this article goes back to Johan Galtung’s first seminal demarcation between positive peace and negative peace, and argues that his definition of positive peace is compatible with studying friendship. Specifically, Galtung’s definition of friendship connects to the ongoing research of a growing group of International Relations (IR) theorists that study friendship between states. Furthermore, this article takes into account several recent studies that show that the Journal of Peace Research (JPR) has traditionally ignored the field of positive peace. Finally, it will be shown that Johan Galtung’s most recent work pays special attention to the concept of friendship between individuals.