The article discusses the connection between Bauhaus, a modern art and architecture school founded in 1919, and National Socialism. The central question is to what extent modern ideas about art and culture, architecture and modern life went hand in hand with the emerging and assertive National Socialist ideas. In the review of an art and architecture collection, activities of famous Bauhaus figures are traced in order to discuss the Bauhaus myth. Accordingly, it must be concluded that neutrality of art and architecture does not exist and Bauhaus modernity was not incompatible with National Socialism.

Art crime, related to the existence of hidden art, appears in the legal and illegal art market. In the criminal ‘artopolis’ especially iconoclasm, forgeries and looting are longstanding phenomena. Today they are subject to the debate on art restitution.

During the conflict in Syria and Iraq, Islamic State demolished and looted countless cultural heritage sites and the statues therein, as well as archaeological sites and museums. These acts of iconoclasm, broadly shown in propaganda videos, were aimed at erasing the cultural identity of the population. Additionally, the destruction and looting were also a means to obtain antiquities that could be sold in order to bring in revenues. This article tries to explain the iconoclasm and illicit antiquities trade constructed by Islamic State and how they were related.

In 1938, Nico (or Niko) Gunzburg founded the Institute of Criminology at Ghent University.
Because he was a professor of Jewish origin, Flemish-minded, a political liberal and a freemason, he became the victim, in 1940 and in 1941, of looting by the ‘Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg für die besetzten Gebiete’. Personal books, documents, art and archives concerning his lodge ‘Marnix van Sint Aldegonde’ were stolen from his house and transported to nazi-Germany. After the Second World War, almost the entire collection was found in the Moscow-Archive and subject to restitution.

The Russian avant-garde world serves as an empirical example of the embeddedness of criminal actors (fraudsters, smugglers, thieves) in the legal art market of curators, collectors and museum directors. The article discusses various dilemmas regarding the interpretation of criminal activities in the art world. Is the smuggling of ‘forbidden art’ from the Soviet Union a patriotic act or a crime? Why do world-famous museums exhibit forgeries? What are the financial and judicial consequences of a lack of consensus between art experts?

This article analyses political discourses in the light of the vocabulary and suggestions contained in the parliamentary resolutions proposed in 2019 dealing with the restitution. It appears that the discourses are committed but the developed suggestions are mild. This apparent contradiction can be explained through Hanna Pitkin’s work on political representation. Using this analysis, two reflections are proposed in the conclusion: one on the Belgian case with regards to the European context and the other on the current expectations of society.

This paper looks at a selection of famous forgeries of archaeological objects – the James Ossuary, the Shroud of Turin, the Piltdown Man Skull and the Archaeoraptor Fossil – to consider how these artefacts were falsified for personal benefit, whether in terms of fame or finance. The Shroud of Turin was identified as a forgery as early as 1389, and yet the value in terms of income from pilgrims was such that it continued to be displayed and venerated. The James Ossuary was forged for profit and notoriety, to gain renown and then to sell. The Piltdown Man Skull was one of many alleged forgeries by a man who sought renown by finding the ‘missing link’ that proved the Darwinian theory of evolution from ape to homo erectus. The same motivation drove the scientists who tried to pass off the Archaeoraptor Fossil as the ‘missing link’ that proved the relation of dinosaurs and birds.

This essay discusses green criminology in relation to the development of non-anthropocentric research perspectives in history and cultural anthropology. Green criminological concepts of ‘environmental harm’ and ‘ecocide’ turn doing harm to nature and ecosystems, even when legal, into object of criminological research. Historical research exploring a wider time frame deepens and enriches criminological understanding of, e.g., wildlife trafficking and climate change. According active agency to animals and other non-human actors and attempts to create a new language transcending human-nature dichotomies, as undertaken in transspecies or multispecies history, anthropology, and narratology, offer substantial contributions to green criminologies of everyday life.

The current poor conservation status of Dutch nature is a result of human activities and is therefore characteristic of the era of the Anthropocene in which we now live. As a result of climate change, desiccation and a surplus of nitrogen and other environmental problems, the survival of many habitats and plants in the EU and in the Netherlands is at stake. Recent scientific research shows that many habitats and plants are in an unfavorable conservation status. Biodiversity is under great pressure. In almost all cases, the declining biodiversity can primarily be traced back to human activities and the consequences of these activities for nature. The EU Habitats Directive and the Dutch Nature Conservation Act provide a legal system that obliges the protection of all wild habitats and plants. Although the objective of both regulations suggests otherwise, the protection of nature in the application of provisions from the Dutch Nature Conservation Act is not an intrinsic objective. The extent to which habitats and plants are protected is linked to human – often economic – interests. It is this ambivalence in existing laws and regulations – the human perspective – that makes it possible to ‘disable’ rules that are precisely intended to preserve habitat types and plants relatively easily. As a result, environmental problems caused by humans are not or not completely resolved. Remarkably enough, the design and application of current national and international nature conservation law contributes to the undisturbed continuation of the Anthropocene era in which we live.

This article focuses on the ways in which animal activists that are affiliated with the Dutch branch of Anonymous for the Voiceless – a rapidly growing animal rights organization – shape their movement and actions in the context of the Anthropocene. Drawing on qualitative data, the results show that there are tensions between the way in which the organization presents itself to its audiences and the internal dynamics within the movement. In their frontstage performance, they highlight the open and non-coercive nature of their movement, which they describe as new activism. However, this performance contrasts with the abolitionist vision and internal dynamics within the movement, which is characterized by a clear hierarchy, strict rules for a vegan lifestyle and far-reaching consequences when not complying with those rules.

Past and present human activity lies at the basis of the unprecedented environmental crisis we face today. This article explores the drivers and dynamics that are directly and indirectly responsible for the environmental crisis in the Anthropocene by using a green and organizational criminology perspective and combining it with insights from perpetrator studies. Responsible actors and responsibilities are discussed on societal, organizational and individual level. Lessons are drawn on how existing insights in criminology can be challenged to better accommodate for the ecological challenges in the antropocene and on what that means for criminologists experiencing and researching the Anthropocene.

In recent years, there has been a shift within animal ethics, in which animals are no longer seen purely as passive suffering subjects, but attention is also being paid to their role as agents. In this essay, we look at what that agency means and argue that in the Anthropocene animals are actually victimized in two ways: because their agency is literally curtailed by human actions and because at the knowledge level agency is taken away from them: we see them as victims even when they are not. In this text, we focus on zoo animals to illustrate how this works.

Climate litigation is an understudied phenomenon in criminology. In this article we will discuss the rise of climate change litigation and growing recognition of global environmental harms from a green criminological perspective. More specifically, we will discuss both the legal reasoning and the impact of the Urgenda case in the Netherlands in the context of environmental, ecological and climate justice. We will conclude with how this case contributes for the recognition of diverse climate victims and strengthening of climate justice in the near future.

‘Antropocene’ is a wellknown concept among those that are concerned about the Earth’s future. Nevertheless, there is a heated scientific debat about the start of this era in history and the name ‘antropocene’in itself. In this contribution it is stated that that debate is helpful in raising important questions about the desatrous influence of mankind on live on this planet. Criminologists should take a stance and address these questions as well. This contribution includes a manifest that contains points for further action for criminologists.

The impact of climate change, long merely an abstract prospect, has rapidly become manifest these last years. To prevent rapid global warming, a daunting level of policy intervention is needed. The Green New Deal is an attempt to address that challenge. It is a political programme that combines energy transition with a social agenda focused on providing employment and welfare. While the early and more radical versions of the Green New Deal idea question the necessity of growth itself, the more moderate programmes now pursued by the EU and the Biden administration approach the Green New Deal as a new ‘growth strategy’ that will help western economies recover from the corona pandemic.

The environmental crisis makes it clear that our current legal instruments and concepts are not sufficient to effectively combat, remedy and prevent widespread environmental harm. However, new concepts and approaches are being developed that try to reduce these legal imperfections. Our essay explores these developments, in particular the emergence of a legal duty of care for the environment, the rights of nature-movement, the campaign to make ecocide (mass damage and destruction of the environment) an international crime and the application of restorative justice to repair environmental harm. We also advocate a new multidisciplinary perspective launched by us: positive green criminology.