PUTTING VIOLENCE IN ITS PLACE: THE INFLUENCE OF RACE,ETHNICITY, GENDER,AND PLACE ON THE RISK FOR VIOLENCE*

Research Summary: This research shows that non-Latino black, non-Latino white, and Latino males and females in the U.S. experience significantly different levels of stranger and non-stranger violence, and that these forms of non-lethal violence are especially pronounced in areas with high levels of socioeconomic disadvantage. Many of the differences between these groups are eliminated once community and other individual characteristics are taken into account. Policy Implications: The results suggest that victimization resources should be geographically targeted at places with high levels of poverty and single-parent families, and that the most stable institutions within these communities be drawn upon to deliver information about victimization prevention and services.     

THE PARABLE OF THE METAL: DEPLETED URANIUM,NATO, AND THE ISSUE OF “ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY”

In this article, we present a parable about how a metal, depleted uranium (DU), became linked both with a security organization, NATO, and a security concept, “environmental security,” and did so in a most dramatic, if short-lived, manner during late 2000 and early 2001. A parable involves the telling of a story for didactic purpose. It might even be considered a kind of “continued metaphor,” to use the expression sometimes reserved for that related device, allegory. By this is implied that we resort to parable when we want to get across a message, one that seems, on the surface, to be about something else altogether. ¹ 1. H.W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2nd ed., rev. Sir Ernest Gowers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 558. Partly we do this for the dramatic effect produced; partly we do it because it is an economical way of expressing meaning. As a variant of metaphor, parable enables us to see what might otherwise have been obscured, because as the philosopher Earl Mac Cormac reminded us, “explanations without metaphor would be difficult if not impossible, for in order to describe the unknown, we must resort to concepts that we know and understand, and that is the essence of metaphor—an unusual juxtaposition of the familiar and the unfamiliar.” ² 2. Earl R. Mac Cormac, A Cognitive Theory of Metaphor (Cambridge. MA: MIT Press, 1985), p. 9.      

Congressional Delegation of Spending Power to the Defense Department in the Post‐9–11 Period

The advantages of increased delegation of resource management authority by Congress have long been argued by defense leadership. It is an important issue because of its relevance to congressional assessment of defense management, budget priorities, and how to enforce policy preferences. This paper investigates the series of supplemental appropriations for the war on terrorism to determine (a) under what conditions, and how and why Congress delegates budget authority to defense, (b) what happened with respect to the degree of delegation after appropriation during budget execution, and (c) what this case teaches us about the evolving budgetary relationship between Congress and the Defense Department.