Discursive Dislocation: Toward a Poststructuralist Theory of Crisis in Global Politics

In the discipline of International Relations (IR) and beyond, the concept of crisis is essentially contested, and one specific usage, it seems, is called into question by alternative uses of the term. The article develops the argument that crisis must not be misunderstood as exogenous to social construction; indeed, the very notion of crisis only makes sense if understood as produced entirely in what we will later specify as discourse. In this way, it can be illustrated how allegedly objective crises are expressions of particular configurations of social forms of power. The discourse theoretical notion of dislocation will be introduced in order to develop an understanding of crisis as a qualitative as well as constitutive feature of the social crisis. Crisis can in this sense be seen as a permanent attribute of the social, not some transitory condition that appears from time to time.     

European security policy for the people? Public opinion and the EU's Common Foreign,Security and Defence policy

The democratic foundations of European integration in the foreign and defence realm are increasingly being debated. This article looks at the question of democratic legitimacy from one particular angle, by examining public opinion as measured in Eurobarometer surveys between 1989 and 2009. Based on reflections about the relation between polling results and wider questions of democracy, it examines three aspects of public opinion: general support for a common foreign and a common defence policy; differences among support rates in EU member states; and what roles Europeans would prefer for European armed forces. It turns out that general support for a common foreign policy is high, whereas the desirability of a common defence policy is much more contested. Moreover, citizens across Europe would prefer European armed forces to take on traditional tasks, as territorial defence. An EU defence policy that goes beyond strict intergovernmentalism and is directed towards protecting international law and universal human rights would thus require a significant communicative effort to become accepted.     

Coordination Risk and Cost Impacts on Economic Development in Poor Rural Areas

This paper addresses issues relevant to a critical problem in economic development: how to get rapid pro-poor economic growth in poor rural areas in Africa and South Asia where most of the world's dollar a day poor live. It examines constraints to the development of coordinated exchange systems in poor rural areas, focusing on the core problem of thin markets and low density of economic activity in these areas. Transaction cost and risk analysis is integrated into a conventional neoclassical production economics framework to describe the existence of low level equilibrium traps in transactions and supply chains and to generate important insights for development policy.     

Examination of live victims of violent crimes at the Institutes of Legal Medicine of Hanover, Cologne and Leipzig

During the last few years the importance of clinical forensic medicine has increased within the field itself, but also in interdisciplinary cooperation. Although examinations of live victims play a substantial role in the every-day work of most German forensic scientists, the number of data published on their frequency and the type of offence for which they were performed is small. For this reason a comparison of the data from the Institutes of Legal Medicine in Hanover, Cologne and Leipzig was carried out. Most of the examinations performed by all the three institutes were ordered by courts, the prosecution or the police. Only in a few cases did private persons or hospitals ask for a forensic expert opinion on injuries. During the study period the total number of examined violence victims per annum increased noticeably from 252 in 1999 to 507 in 2003. The total number of examinations during the five-year study period amounted to 1181 in Hanover, 393 in Leipzig and 198 in Cologne, which all have a similar number of inhabitants in the respective catchment area of the institutes. Most of the examinations were carried out in victims of bodily harm, sexual assault and child abuse, but also in traffic offences, for age determination, in self-inflicted injuries and in suspects of homicide. On the one hand the remarkable rise of the number of physical examinations shows that the importance of forensic expert opinions is increasingly recognized. On the other hand the considerable regional differences demonstrate that the competence offered by the Institutes of Legal Medicine in the documentation and interpretation of violence is by far not yet sufficiently used.     

An unusual case of double death

The report presents the case of an alleged double homicide or a homicide followed by suicide of a couple, in which the court-ordered autopsy of both victims revealed that the homicide had been committed by the husband immediately before he died himself from cardiac failure. The article gives a short summary of the pathophysiological relations between emotional tension (stress) and physical strain and the effects on the cardiovascular system. The case report describes a homicide by strangulation immediately followed by the perpetuator's death from a natural cause.     

Injuring potential of drinking glasses

At a party of a sports club, an argument started between two groups of young men, in the course of which one of the persons involved threw a beer glass hitting a young man of the other group, who collapsed with a profusely bleeding wound. Although resuscitation measures were initiated immediately, the victim died at the scene due to exsanguination from the completely severed left external carotid artery in combination with the aspiration of blood. Tests with drinking glasses thrown at a skull-neck model suggested that an undamaged beer glass thrown at the head of the victim could not cause the fatal injuries on the neck because of its splintering behaviour. In fact, it seemed that the beer glass had been damaged prior to throwing it and that its sharp edges perforated the skin on hitting the neck.     

The role of subsidized housing in reducing homelessness: An empirical investigation using micro-data

Additional funding for subsidized housing is one of the most commonly proposed solutions to the problem of homelessness. For example, the Interagency Council on the Homeless has called for a $2 billion increase in the budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to address the shortage of subsidized housing. However, research on the effect of subsidized housing in reducing homelessness is far from conclusive. This study combines data from the American Housing Survey (AHS) with a survey of the homeless to estimate the effectiveness of subsidized housing in reducing homelessness. The results indicate that subsidized housing has not targeted those most at risk of being homeless, and therefore a simple expansion of existing housing programs will have little effect on the number of homeless.