The rapid digitalization of the economy has led to the proliferation of companies with primarily digital presences and global operations. This transformation has prompted governments worldwide to impose digital taxes on technology companies, sparking debates about the compatibility of such measures with international investment law. The introduction of digital taxes represents a significant departure from traditional territorial based tax principles, creating legal uncertainty and potentially discriminatory effects. And while the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework aims to establish a multilateral solution to digital taxation, its implementation poses challenges, including potential investor claims. Against this backdrop, this chapter explores the implications of digital taxation on foreign investors’ rights under international investment agreements, by examining four key questions: whether digital assets can qualify as protected “investments” under investment treaties; whether digital taxes violate national treatment obligations by disproportionately burdening foreign investors; whether such measures breach the right to fair and equitable treatment, including legal stability; and whether they amount to unlawful indirect expropriation by neutralizing digital assets as investments. By addressing these issues, this chapter highlights the evolving interplay between digital taxation and international investment law, emphasizing the need for balanced solutions that mitigate conflicts while fostering legal certainty in the digital economy.

Thomism is a tradition of thought that has attracted adherents through the centuries. It goes without saying that Thomists recognize the decisive genius of St. Thomas Aquinas. But a commitment to Thomism is not just a commitment to the man, despite whatever admiration we may have for his personal character. Thomism is adopted because it is recognized that the way of thinking involved therein conveys something important, indeed true, about a significant aspect of reality. It is precisely because Aquinas’s way of thought conveys something of the truth that people have been prepared to adopt and defend it through the centuries; hence we have a tradition of thought that is Thomism.

Neoclassical theists reject the traditional divine attributes of impassibility and immutability, holding that God can be affected by the things he has created and is thus changeable. Some claim, for example, that God undergoes changes in emotional state, has desires that can be either satisfied or frustrated, grows in knowledge, and can suffer. I argue that this position rests on a simplistic distortion of perfect being theology grounded in highly contestable intuitions and conceptually sloppy usage of key terms (such as “emotion” and “knowledge”). By contrast, the first-cause theology of Thomism is grounded in a rigorously worked-out metaphysics that neoclassical writers typically engage with only superficially if at all. Nor is “neoclassical” theism really new, but in fact marks a regression to a crudely anthropomorphic conception of God that Western thought moved beyond at the time of Xenophanes.

Although Elizabeth Bowen is primarily known for her work as a novelist throughout her long career, her prose frequently resembles poetry. She often borrows elements from verse to enhance her fiction. Notably, the three-part greater romantic lyric has an influence on The House in Paris and The Death of the Heart in its plying together of past and present, as well as different locations. In her lectures, radio broadcasts, and literary criticism, Bowen was fond of illustrating the craft of fiction with examples from verse. Not only was she an avid reader and reviewer of contemporary poets such as T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, and May Sarton, but she was also a close friend of many of them. Whenever her work was compared to poetry, she took it as the highest compliment. This essay explores her intertwined connections, both in her language and in her life, to the poets and poetry that surrounded her.

Chapter 2 provides the historical context of the Ghana–Togo borderland region. I show how the border communities I have visited manifested both plurality and unity, showing strong remnants of Ewe unity despite the border but also dissensions reaffirming the border as a separation. I then delve deeper into the roots of the historical in-betweenness of the border region explaining the multiplicity of political communities layered on top of each other from the precolonial period to the 1956 plebiscite. Finally, I analyse the scholarship’s approach to nation-building projects arising from the border region in the 1950s. While the literature on political activism in the border region concludes on the failure of the diverse political projects that arose, the persistence of these projects today is not fully explained. I argue that the palimpsestic and interconnected nature of political communities in the borderlands contributes to explain this phenomenon – which suggests that other frameworks smaller than the Westphalian conception of nation-state are at work.

Chapter 9 is on the different motives and ways through which social actors destroy images, and the consequences of these actions on different forms of image ‘death’. Analysing image destruction could show the different dynamics of what is tolerated in the public space, what is deemed appropriate, representable, and visible, and what is deemed offensive and needs to be made invisible. Methods for researching absences will be presented and applied on the case example of digital memes.

Friendship is largely perceived as a private and highly positive relationship. By interrogating friendship performances undertaken by girls at school and on social media, this chapter illuminates the public and critical aspects of friendship. I draw on performative theory and the sociology of personal life to analyze data from two ethnographic studies, one conducted with girls in an elementary school in Israel and the other conducted with girls in an antiracist youth work organization in Scotland. I analyze the aims, content, and outcomes of friendship performances as well as the contexts that shape them. I argue that successful friendship performances strengthen and validate these relationships, especially in socially intensive settings, while failed performances reflect and lead to friendship difficulties and breakdowns. Moreover, as friendship is relatively uninstitutionalized and its obligations unclear, publicly performing friendship enables individuals to elucidate their desired friendship characteristics and try to live up to their demands.

Chapter 4 turns to the so-called general semantic network (GSN), which consists of several very high-level, interconnected cortical areas that are considered transmodal because they operate on two or more types of sensory/motor information. Mounting evidence suggests that the GSN contributes to word meanings by performing a variety of integrative and relational functions. Continuing with the example of scissors, the GSN conjoins its distinctive experiential features (which, as noted above, are housed in modal networks of sensory/motor areas), assembles them into a coherent concept that can easily be accessed during language production and comprehension, situates this particular concept in relation to many others, and connects it with personal memories and attitudes (e.g., using one’s favorite pair of scissors in an enjoyable project). As we’ll see, one of the most fascinating properties of the GSN is that it overlaps substantially with the well-studied default mode network (DMN), which mediates internally oriented mental processes such as recalling one’s past, imagining one’s future, simulating dialogues, and contemplating other people’s thoughts and feelings – all of which require semantic cognition.

The Tennessee Centennial Exposition of 1897 celebrated the centennial of Tennessee’s admission to the United States. This chapter argues that the use of Greek and Grecian architecture at Nashville was connected to Nashville’s reputation as a city of learning and culture. During the nineteenth century, Nashville was known as the Athens of the South and of the West. A life-sized replica of the Parthenon was the fair’s premier building. Archaeological accuracy and color were also essential to creating the fair’s Parthenon. Other buildings incorporated classical motifs from different periods, demonstrating the flexibility and fluidity of ancient architecture and embodying the neo-antique. This classical architecture embodied Nashville’s arrival as a city, but it also celebrated the New South and reflected the codification of the racist Jim Crow laws. Thus, the appropriation of classical architecture to justify institutional racism is examined. Egyptian architecture played a prominent role here. Shelby County erected a pyramid for its pavilion, which was an exceptional use of Egyptian architecture at United States fairs. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the enduring importance of the rebuilt Nashville Parthenon (and its Athena statue) as a symbol of culture and democracy for the city.

This chapter looks at Barbara Strozzi both as a daughter and a mother. She was raised in the house of her adoptive father, Giulio Strozzi, and her mother, Isabella Garzoni, or Griega. The relationship between Barbara–born illegitimately, as had been her father and grandfather before her– and Giulio, is enhanced through a close reading of his wills. The household eventually expanded to include Barbara’s four children, born to her and one of her father’s friends, Giovanni Paolo Vidman. Barbara had known Vidman at least from 1634, as revealed in Nicolò Fontei’s dedication to Vidman in his Bizzarie, though their first child was born only in 1641. Vidman died in 1648, yet the Strozzis’ connections to his family continued until 1719, with the death of Barbara’s eldest son, Giulio Pietro.