Art as contextual element in improving hospital patients’ well-being: A scoping review

The study investigates how visual art as a contextual element affects patients’ well-being and experience of healthcare facilities, especially in hospitals. Placing artworks into hospital rooms may be one way to improve these experiences, and, for example, applying virtual reality can offer new opportunities for increased well-being. A total of 29 research articles indexed in three databases (Arts in Medicine, PubMed and PsycINFO) were included in the review. They were selected using thematic searches. The study shows that systematic research supporting the value of art in the healthcare sector is still limited. Moreover, it acknowledges clear positive effects of art on patient outcomes in a hospital context. It is concluded that artworks can positively affect the mood of patients and offer them means to better cope with mental and physical health conditions although more research of different art practices in hospital contexts is needed.

Surveillance, Radicalization, and Prison Change Self-Analysis of an Ethnographic Survey Under Tension

This article is based on a sociological research, combining qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations, undertaken in “radicalization assessment units” in French prisons. We will first summarize the context of negotiating the research agreement, amidst a climate of panic on the part of political authorities who feared terrorist attacks. Then we will describe empirically the way the researchers were particular objects of surveillance on the prison grounds, in a way that was different, in its nature and unusual intensity, than the usual surveillance of other people who come into the prison. Lastly, we will show that this surveillance spreads beyond the prison walls, for example, the researchers were tailed when they left the prison. A reflexive work would explore all the ambiguities of this surveillance—from protection to control—and at the same time consider this surveillance of the researchers not as a contextual element of the study, but an object of the analysis in its own right. In doing so, this case study more broadly examines the methodological challenges of ethnography undertaken in difficult fieldwork together with a grounded theory capable of integrating into the analysis the vicissitudes and uncertainties of the research process itself.

Designing Immersive Virtual Environments for Human Behavior Research

What are strategies for the design of immersive virtual environments (IVEs) to understand environments’ influence on behaviors? To answer this question, we conducted a systematic review to assess peer-reviewed publications and conference proceedings on experimental and proof-of-concept studies that described the design, manipulation, and setup of the IVEs to examine behaviors influenced by the environment. Eighteen articles met the inclusion criteria. Our review identified key categories and proposed strategies in the following areas for consideration when deciding on the level of detail that should be included when prototyping IVEs for human behavior research: 1) the appropriate level of detail (primarily visual) in the environment: important commonly found environmental accessories, realistic textures, computational costs associated with increased details, and minimizing unnecessary details, 2) context: contextual element, cues, and animation social interactions, 3) social cues: including computer-controlled agent-avatars when necessary and animating social interactions, 4) self-avatars, navigation concerns, and changes in participants’ head directions, and 5) nonvisual sensory information: haptic feedback, audio, and olfactory cues.

Defining the National, Ethnic, Racial and Religious Groups of Genocide in the Practice of International Criminal Courts

The article analyzes the approaches of international courts (the UN International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and hybrid Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia) to the criteria for defining genocide groups. The article emphasizes that the definition of belonging to a group is a contextual circumstance (contextual element) of the crime of genocide. In particular, the paper studies how the international courts applied positive/negative and objective/subjective identification strategies to conclude that certain groups constitute those protected by the Genocide Convention or the statutes of the international criminal courts. In addition, the article deals with the problem of the stability and mobility of the groups and the ways these characteristics help the international courts to apply the Convention.The article focuses on a search for algorithms that allow international courts to identify genocide groups. It stresses that the international criminal courts have not demonstrated consistency in their assessment of the definition of the groups. Neither have they showed the synchronized understanding of the approaches (objective/subjective, positive/negative, stable/mobile) to be used for the identification of these groups. Therefore, it is further argued that, due to the variability of approaches and strategies used by international courts to identify genocide groups, belonging to the group is a window of opportunity for a contextual reading of international criminal law.

Comparative higher education research in times of globalisation of higher education: Theoretical and methodological insights

In times of globalisation of higher education, alternative theoretical and methodological approaches were introduced in the field of comparative higher education research. To stimulate the debate on this issue, this paper firstly addresses them theoretically by combining the concept of institutional isomorphism and the ‘glonacal’ analytical heuristic. On this basis, it discusses arguments in favour of convergence and diversity from the perspective of the internationalisation of higher education and also points to the limits of institutional isomorphism resulting from ‘glonacal’ influences of agencies and agency on the development of (internationalisation of) higher education. Secondly, the paper also draws attention to the influence of globalisation on the selection of methodology in comparative higher education research by exposing the limits of methodological nationalism. Along these lines, it portrays the reversed pyramid model of different horizontal and vertical levels of comparisons with which it establishes the (missing) link between the selected theoretical and methodological framework of comparative (higher education) research. In conclusion, it acknowledges the need to integrate the contextual element into the comparative framework which allows thorough analysis of complex relationships between globalisation and higher education both theoretically and methodologically.

International Cooperation for the Repression of Core Crimes

The burden of ensuring the repression of crimes that shock the conscience of mankind lies primarily with States. National prosecution of core crimes, however, relies heavily on inter-State cooperation. The obligation to cooperate in order to bring to justice the authors of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity may well be considered as a corollary of the erga omnes obligation to investigate and punish these crimes. The international instruments devoted to the repression of core crimes, however, fail to provide a sufficient regulatory framework for horizontal cooperation in this field, leaving it to States to make use of the tools established under domestic law, or provided by other existing treaties. The UNTOC and its Supplementing Protocols may prove useful in this framework. Even though these instruments were not expressly designed to tackle core crimes, some of the offences covered by them may indeed qualify as crimes against humanity or war crimes, if assisted by the ‘contextual element’ which characterizes the latter crimes. The UNTOC, moreover, can be used to further the prosecution of criminal groups that aid the commission of core crimes for profit.

Ch.Four Crimes Against Humanity

This chapter explains crimes against humanity. Crimes against humanity are mass crimes committed against a civilian population. Most serious is the killing of entire groups of people, which is also characteristic of genocide. Crimes against humanity target fundamental, recognised human rights, in particular life, health, freedom, and dignity. These violations of individual rights become international crimes when they are committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population. The chapter discusses the history and structure of the crime, as well as protected interests. It then presents the contextual element of this crime, which is an attack on a civilian population as defined in the ICC Statute. After this, individual acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population are next discussed. Lastly, this chapter explores the multiplicity of offenses within this category.

6 Underlying Offences

This chapter explores the underlying offences which can constitute crimes against humanity. Crimes against humanity are composed of two core elements: a chapeau or contextual element and an underlying crime committed in and sufficiently linked to the chapeau. The list of underlying crimes that could, in theory, qualify as crimes against humanity is limited in nature and has not significantly evolved since Nuremberg. The Nuremberg Charter provided for six categories of crimes against humanity: murder; extermination; enslavement; deportation; other inhumane acts; and persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds. Control Council Law No. 10, which regulated the subsequent prosecution of Nazi war criminals in occupied Germany, provided for the same six categories and added three other crimes to the list: imprisonment, rape, and torture. The chapter then assesses which crimes against humanity form part of customary international law.

International Crimes: Law and Practice

The law of international crimes has become increasingly dense over the years, which has rendered the law of international crimes more sophisticated and more complex. This is perhaps most apparent in relation to the law of crimes against humanity. From a single paragraph in Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter, the law of crimes against humanity has grown into dozens of interacting definitional elements and an extensive body of practice. As part of this development, crimes against humanity have established their own normative identity with a distinctive chapeau or contextual element and a broad range of underlying offences, including discrimination-based crimes, penal translations of what are in effect serious human rights violations, a series of gender-based crimes and a residual offence of ‘other inhuman acts’. The combined effect of a sophisticated body of criminal law, international obligations directed at ensuring accountability and a multiplication of judicial venues competent to adjudicate upon such crimes, carries with it the hope that crimes against humanity could become an effective enforcer of international justice. However, resistance to full and universal accountability for such crimes is still a powerful political reality that undermines the possibility of justice and the institutions that are devoted to it. The present volume hopes to contribute to achieving that goal as the law of crimes against humanity is as important and relevant today as it was when first enforced. As it stands today, that law is a testimony to the efforts of many who have strived to ensure that atrocities should not remain unpunished.