Peace conceptualizations: From Galtung to Sen and beyond

The international academic debate on "peace" has been articulated in different ways, but initially and for a long time remained focused on an idea of peace that was essentially seen as the absence of war ("negative" peace). In the field of Peace Studies, attention has gradually shifted to a broader conceptualization of peace, known as "positive" peace. Galtung's notion of 'positive' peace, despite its good intentions, is in fact quite problematic. In this article, I first analyze Galtung's seminal contributions on the conceptualization of peace, underlying its shortcomings. Drawing on a re-conceptualization of peace as an asymptotic process of "construction of", that is, a tension towards a horizon which we can imagine but never fully achieve, I then propose a rethinking of conflict, outside the logics of containment, elimination or transformation.