Peace is a commonly used word. However, defining peace is more complicated,. Negative peace is defined as absence of direct or physical violence while positive peace focuses on presence of conditions of well-being and just relationships. In the positive definition, the focus is on the resolution of structural (e.g. poverty, hunger, gender inequality), socio-cultural (e.g. racism, sexism, religious intolerance) and ecological conflicts (e.g. pollution, over-consumption) (Castro, Galace 2010). In the first part of the article, peace and especially holistic and multidisciplinary Culture of Peace will be defined and shortly presented.

The aforementioned perspective on peace can form an “alliance” with degrowth movement, like Buen Vivir, Economy of Permanence, Feminist Economics and Ubuntu (D'Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis., 2014). The second part of this article is start connecting the dots between those two perspective. The first dot to start with would be the term of “slow violence” that derived from the environmentalism of the poor (Nixon, 2011). Consequently, the values, the characteristics and the multilevel actors of each approach are examined having in the focal point their similarities (Demaria, et al., 2013).

The final part of the article will focus on the disputes between degrowth and Culture of Peace while trying offer counterproposals to Culture of Peace from a degrowth perspective. Inter alia, sustainable development, growth fetish and economism, and last but not the least, heteronomy and lack of genuine grassroot participation.

This media entry was a contribution to the special session „Culture of Peace and Degrowth“ at the 5th International Degrowth Conference in Budapest in 2016.