Mladen Dolar (2020) argues philosophy is split by an inherent antagonismantagonism between idealism and materialism, a split for which there is no position of neutrality and therefore one must take sides. In the field of peace and conflict studiespeace and conflict studies, scholars have typically sided with materialism over idealism. For example, (Galtung, 1967), philosophical idealism remains too metaphysical and abstract to be of any utility to peace thinkingpeace thinking and he warns us against the “idealism a Hegel embraces and a Marx rejects” (Galtung, 1996, p. viii), an implicit reference to Marx’s insistence that Hegel’s idealism must be turned right side up again (Marx, 1976). Other peace scholars agree, claiming that philosophical idealism “is difficult to apply in practice and is easily dismissed as a luxury we practical people do not have much time for” (Erol, Ali. 2010). Therefore, this chapter considers peace as a materialist field of inquiry by comparing two main strands of materialism in peace theory: cultural materialismmaterialismcultural and new materialisms and realismsmaterialismnew. It concludes by comparing these forms of materialism to Lacanian-HegelianLacanian-Hegelian dialectical materialismmaterialismdialectical with the aim of introducing the reader to the theoretical framework guiding the rest of the book.