The Ewe-speaking region straddling the border between Ghana and Togo has not been envisioned by much of the scholarship as a viable political community capable of forming a nation-state. Yet this interpretation does not account for the continued identity claims arising from this transnational region. By looking more closely at grassroots perceptions of what constitutes a political community, the diagnostic may be different. This chapter considers how the scalar and genealogical principle underpinning the local indigenous political space, the dukɔ , has come to underpin the transnational Ewe-speaking region to form a larger political community. This is notable in the Ewe Newsletters, which aimed to convene and construct a transnational Ewe nation based on mutual recognition and oral tradition but also today across the border in both oral tradition and the performance of festivals.

British imperial expansion reinforced expanded white supremacy from the late 1700s through the mid 1800s. Rather than weakening after the loss of American colonies, British concepts of racial superiority intensified through colonial encounters in India, Australia, and beyond. In India, British East India Company rule shifted from early trade partnerships to domination justified by claims of innate European superiority. In Australia, colonizers treated indigenous peoples as obstacles to be removed, implementing policies of displacement and ethnic cleansing in Tasmania. Meanwhile, emerging scientific disciplines like craniology provided justification for racial hierarchies, with researchers across Europe collaborating to measure and categorize human differences. Though the abolition of the slave trade (1807) and slavery (1833) in the British Empire marked significant humanitarian victories, these reforms did not challenge underlying assumptions of white supremacy. This period established enduring patterns of imperial rule based on presumed racial difference, whether through direct violence or supposedly benevolent administration.

The role of international war in the first wave of democratization is the theme of Chapter 8. Scholars have long noted an increase in franchise extensions during wars, and political economists have recently formalized this insight. Still, there is a prevailing view in the literature that international war – particularly WWI – merely hastened the ultimate success of prewar democratization efforts. I argue that international war was not the final straw for the old regime but rather was one of only a small category of exogenous events capable of dislodging a resilient system of competitive oligarchy.

International investment law faces a paradigm shift with the rise of the digital economy. Emerging technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, and the platform economy redefine investment dynamics while challenging traditional regulatory frameworks. Digitalisation expands cross-border investment opportunities in areas like AI, genomics, and smart infrastructure, while also complicating traditional jurisdictional and territorial considerations. The shift from physical to digital assets necessitates a re-evaluation of the classic definitions of an ‘investor’ and ‘investment’. Meanwhile, states increasingly regulate strategic digital assets under national security concerns, introducing measures ranging from data localization mandates to investment screening mechanisms. These changes raise geopolitical and geoeconomic tensions and highlight disparities in digital governance models between major powers. Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) may have to adapt to address disputes over digital assets and data, as well as leverage AI and other digital technologies for efficiency while safeguarding due process. This chapter, along with the broader volume, examines these themes, emphasising balanced frameworks that promote innovation while safeguarding public interests in the evolving digital economy.

Even as friendship carries overwhelmingly positive connotations, the categories of “fair-weather friend” or “frenemy” indicate that less-than-ideal friendship is commonplace. What remains poorly understood is how people make sense of the persistence of their imperfect friendships. Drawing on studies of difficult friendships and friends who cohabitate, this chapter offers an interpretive perspective on how and why friendships that people characterize as difficult persist. Using the concept of the “good enough friend,” we unsettle ubiquitous yet simplistic directives of modern therapeutic culture to “cut off” difficult relationships. We argue that the potential for ease and difficulty are equally inherent to what friendship is, and that by attending to “difficult” ones and how people evaluate their worth, we can better understand how people navigate concord and conflict in personal life. We advance the intervention that a critical friendship must resist hierarchies of intimacy inherited from Western philosophical traditions that rank easy, pleasurable friendships as inherently “better” than ambivalent ones, which may also have core places in people’s lives.

Terrorism’s history teaches important lessons about the causes and consequences of asymmetric warfare between standing armies and paramilitary insurgents. This chapter supplies a series of snapshots of the long sweep of terrorist activity, running from the turn of the twentieth century’s “Golden Age of Assassination” to 9/11 and beyond. Terrorists, whether “lone wolves” or members of militant groups, differ sharply in their motivations, their tactics and the goals they pursue – indeed, some leftist groups have not articulated any purpose beyond “wrecking the system” – but economic models of rational human action help identify some commonalities and, what is most important, supply ways of seeking answers to history’s open questions.

CTG is considered a screening test for intrapartum fetal hypoxia so that features suggestive of ongoing hypoxic stress may be recognized and timely and appropriate action taken to avoid hypoxic–ischaemic brain injury. Several non-hypoxic causes may also give abnormal changes on the trace. In the absence of a coexisting or superimposed hypoxic stress, deep and repetitive decelerations may be absent on the CTG. Traditional guidelines may miss these abnormalities. Understanding features likely to be seen on the trace in non-hypoxic causes is essential to ensure timely and appropriate action and may help clinicians counsel the patient regarding recommended mode of intrapartum fetal heart rate monitoring and optimal mode of birth. Tests such as fetal ECG are contraindicated in cases of fetal cardiac malformations and conduction defects. Fetal scalp blood sampling is also not appropriate in non-hypoxic causes of non-reassuring features on the CTG trace. Chorioamnionitis and fetal inflammation are also important non-hypoxic pathways of fetal neurological damage and death. Physiological interpretation of CTG is essential to recognize features of non-hypoxic pathways of fetal compromise.

This chapter examines how exiled Syrian intellectuals navigated their positionality between their home society and host countries, developing a dual gaze – balancing engagement with Western audiences while remaining invested in the Syrian cause. Their intellectual production shifted towards universalism, broadening international resonance but risking disconnection from local realities. Two currents shaped this shift: one emphasising cultural difference, reinforcing Orientalising discourse, and another promoting cosmopolitanism, aligning with non-governmental organisation funding priorities. Many also exhibited exceptionalism, framing the Syrian revolution as uniquely tragic and situating it within global discourses of oppression and resistance. The chapter explores ambivalence towards integration, particularly in Germany, where state-led policies were seen as patronising. It concludes by identifying a paradigm shift: from a politics of being perceived (concern with Western views of Syrians) to a politics of perceiving, where exiled intellectuals assert critical agency in judging global political failures rather than merely responding to Western narratives.

This chapter focuses on the Insular practice of wearing sacred texts while moving through the landscape. It focuses on the ritualistic and amuletic use, materiality, and iconography of book shrines and book satchels, as well as the charters, inscriptions, and manumissions inscribed on books and their shrines. It also explores object biography through the uniquely Insular practice of hereditary keepership. Sections include: “Wearing the Word: Books, Book Satchels, and Book Shrines,” “Across Space and Time: Duplication, Embodiment, and Hereditary Keepers,” and “Lorica: Buckled and Bound to Christ.”

This chapter examines quantum decoherence, a process by which quantum information is lost due to environmental interactions. Various noise channels, such as bit-flip, phase-flip, and depolarizing channels, are discussed to illustrate common errors in qubit states. The Kraus representation and Lindblad equation offer frameworks for modeling these interactions. Metrics such as T1 (relaxation time) and T2 (decoherence time) are introduced to measure qubit stability. Understanding decoherence mechanisms is critical for developing strategies to preserve quantum information, laying the groundwork for quantum error correction techniques and highlighting the challenges in creating reliable quantum systems.