The right to freedom of thought is guaranteed by Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights, yet current jurisprudence interprets the right as a mere dimension of freedom of expression, also protected by Article 13. Contemporary neurotechnology research presents the possibility for human thoughts to be tracked, recorded, analysed and predicted. This applies pressure upon the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ current understanding of the right to freedom of thought. This chapter examines how Article 13 has been interpreted by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights at different stages of its jurisprudence. It then argues for an evolution in the interpretation of Article 13 whereby the right to freedom of thought is understood as a distinct right, separate from freedom of expression.

Chapter 3 discusses the concepts of discrimination, sexism and childism. It firstly presents the concept of discrimination under international law. Secondly, it explores the notions of sexism and ‘childism’. It discusses paternalism, child liberationism and the challenge of protecting the girl child while promoting her autonomy rights. It studies theories concerning the interests of children as well as the common vulnerability approach, Arnstein and Hart’s ladder of participation, and the possibility of granting autonomy rights to girls at adolescence. Thirdly, it examines the public/private divide at the international and domestic levels and how it impacts the girl child globally. Chapter 3 thereafter explores the notions of universalism and cultural relativism, as well as the evolving meaning of culture, and their significance for the girl child. In this context, the chapter also analyzes the conceptual division between the Global South and the Global North.

In the light of the growing interest in crypto-assets and the quest for their institutionalisation, we examine the role that they can play as investable assets useful in standard portfolio problems when asset returns are predictable. In particular, we study whether a mix of macroeconomic factors and crypto-specific predictors can be combined to produce accurate and economically valuable pooled forecasts. With reference to Bitcoin data, we uncover that crypto returns are predictable out-of-sample. Moreover, when this crypto-asset is made available to a mean-variance optimising investor, it generates large risk-adjusted realised performance gains irrespective of the assumed risk aversion. The results on the predictability of cryptocurrencies are robust to a generalisation to Litecoin and Ripple, although on a shorter 2015–2020 sample. However, results turn mixed and come to depend on the assumed risk aversion, when we investigate the power of forecast combinations to generate economic value from the entire pool of cryptocurrencies.

This chapter offers a pathbreaking urban history of the Ethiopia–Somalia borderlands. Eastern Ethiopia’s cultural distinctions and tense interethnic relations are often described in terms of broad contrasts between Somali nomadic pastoralism and the sedentary agriculture of Ethiopian highland populations. A close reading of historical accounts tells a different story. Beginning with a discussion of present-day ethnic competition and cooperation in the marketplace, I trace Jigjiga’s social relations back in time, showing how towns including Jigjiga have been crucial sites of interethnic encounters, identity formation, and cultural change. Shifting the focus away from Ethiopia’s tense history of ethno-territorial politics, I suggest that in the city, everyday interactions between identity groups are significantly shaped by expectations about transactability: who is trustworthy, who is not, and who is a legitimate target for cheating or for collaboration. This argument places urban encounters at the center of understanding the salience of ethnic and clan identities in eastern Ethiopia. I argue, furthermore, that urban encounters in Jigjiga play an important role in how distinct identity groups relate to geopolitical borders outside the city and have done so throughout Jigjiga’s history.

Focusing on the right to FoT in the digital age, this chapter sheds light on the societal dimensions of FoT by drawing on the broader and relational concept of thought. It discusses the societal dimensions in light of the four attributes of the right to FoT – the right not to reveal our thoughts; not to be punished for our thoughts; not to have our thoughts manipulated; and, the state duty to create an enabling environment for the fulfilment of the right. The societal dimensions of FoT are justified based on the necessity to nurture the emergence of a critical, reflective, self-determined and democratic society and for the realisation of social harmony.

Global art histories predate the emergence of art history as an academic discipline in the early nineteenth century. This chapter considers their emergence in the seventeenth century against the background of religious and political controversy, Enlightenment quests for the origins of human culture, expanding trade empires, and colonialism. Three varieties of world art histories written in Europe can be distinguished, which succeed in chronological order but do not entirely replace each other: those driven by religious considerations; global concept-based projects inspired by nineteenth-century developments in psychology, anthropology, or the life sciences; and globalization studies. All three varieties start from a Western perspective, but the emerging field of global rococo is one of the most promising attempts to develop a history of the global entanglement of European art.

There has been progress made in the adoption of digital assets by institutional investors. Large institutions including Fidelity, BlackRock, and several investment banks have started providing products and services to satisfy the needs of their clients. Hedge funds and venture capital funds are also investing in digital assets. Global exchanges have introduced investable products based on cryptocurrency derivatives. The number of ways one can invest in digital assets is expected to grow with the introduction of new products. Digital assets are still very new and carry considerable risk. It is prudent of regulators to cautiously approach regulation. At the same time, the markets are looking for clarity from financial regulators. If and when there is more regulatory clarity, the pace of adoption is likely to pick up.

This chapter revisits the book’s central argument and conclusions from each chapter. It concludes that there has been substantial misunderstanding about core aspects of deterrence, which can be addressed by working from a comprehensive approach to theorizing deterrence and using this approach to guide and evaluate research. The chapter also concludes that most extant deterrence-based policies cannot and will not appreciably deter crime, and may even worsen it. The solution lies in policies grounded in stronger science built on better theory and research. Our sincere hope is that comprehensive deterrence theory (CDT) provides a helpful step in that direction.

This chapter recounts women’s reactions to the siege and subsequent fall of Fort Sumter and their short-lived hope that it would be the sole conflict that resulted from secession. Their cathartic moment of joy quickly evaporated when soldiers departed for Virginia, leaving them once again in a tormented state of lonely anticipation. Until the events of First Bull Run, men’s letters home expressed a jovial mood. This atmosphere changed drastically when loved ones began to die in combat. Thus, while Fort Sumter may be considered the first shot of the Civil War, it took First Bull Run for South Carolinians to realize the urgency of the conflict and finally, completely, enter the Civil War. The conclusion traces the lives of the elite white women profiled through the Civil War and its aftermath. Many of them earnestly subscribed to the Lost Cause myth after the war, writing rosy memoirs of antebellum days or joining Confederate memorial organizations. That their prewar predictions of doom and destruction do not line up with their postwar remembrances further proves that the Lost Cause mythology is divorced from the reality of the South after the Civil War.

The right to freedom of thought is not explicitly mentioned in the German Basic Law. This chapter examines whether and how freedom of thought might be implicitly protected in the Basic Law (GG), focusing on the right to freedom of belief, conscience and religion (Article 4 GG), the right to freedom of expression and information (Article 5 GG), the right to human dignity (Article 1(1) GG) and the general right of personality (Article 2(1) in conjunction with Article 1(1) GG). Freedom of thought is sometimes mentioned in the literature in connection with freedom of belief, conscience and religion and freedom of expression and information as a necessary precondition for the formation of convictions and opinions. Inner freedom is an inherent aspect of human dignity, but only extreme forms of interference with the inner freedom of the person constitute a violation of this right. The general right of personality protects the prerequisites of personal freedom and self-determination and therefore could provide the most comprehensive protection for a person’s inner freedom. It is therefore argued that while freedom of thought is within the scope of protection of these four rights, it can be rooted in the general right of personality in particular.

Chapter 3 unpacks the “sickly season,” or the summer of 1860, characterized by the threat of mosquito-related diseases in the Lowcountry. It argues that South Carolinians’ insistence upon traveling to their usual vacation haunts, often ending their trips in New York City, reveals a still-uncertain political future. During this “season” (roughly late May to late October), South Carolinians felt time slow down, and talk of electoral politics faded to the background. South Carolina women continued to express political thoughts, however, revealing rivalries with Virginians that coexisted with desires to form social, and therefore economic and political, relations at Virginia’s healing and resort springs. The annoyance with Virginia reflects a tension between the two states of who is the true inheritor of the American Revolutionary spirit, and this chapter uses the Mount Vernon Ladies Association to explore shifting perceptions of a federalist and yet southern president. It also describes the increasing anxieties surrounding slave rebellion on the eve of secession, and to what extent enslaved women increased their day-to-day resistance as rumors of disunion spread.

This introduction provides an overview of the SMGD-MN study, including information on the context to which it was developed and its theoretical underpinnings. Additionally, we provide key terminology and an overview of the chapters’ content.

This chapter surveys the interrelated histories of literature, religion, and politics in the nineteenth-century United States. In the wake of official church disestablishment, a wave of religious fervor combined with a rising tide of immigrants to form a nation in which literature became a venue for conversion, condemnation, and cultural affirmation. From early national historical romances that sought to confirm the new nation as God’s (Protestant) chosen land to Transcendentalist writings that celebrated the sacredness of the individual American soul, nineteenth-century literature tied American identity to religious pluralism and personal devotion. Sentimental novels penned by women writers and narratives of escape written by the formerly enslaved fitted religious tropes of conversion and resurrection to visions of social reform and political regeneration, while Mormons, Millerites, Shakers, Spiritualists, and other religious innovators developed new models of spiritual identity and literary language suited to an expansive and imperial nation. Over the course of the century, literature served as a venue for theological debate, a vehicle for conversion, a passionate plea for abused humanity, and an imaginative space for envisioning social reform. In each of these modes, authors of literature intervened not only in religious discourses but in the vital political life of the nation.

Appendix

Since the 2010s, the writing of European history – in both its incarnations, as the history of Europe and as the histories of nations in Europe – has seen fundamental transformations. Though it has been adapted in different ways, the global turn has deeply affected the historiography produced in many European countries. On the one hand, crucial watersheds of European history have been reinterpreted as part of larger configurations and as responses to global challenges. On the other hand, it is now clear that Europe’s claim to unity and cohesion was reinforced, not least, by observers from without. In the late nineteenth century, in societies across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, contemporaries began to refer to a “Europe” that was less a specific location than a product of the imagination; the result less of geography or culture than of global geopolitics. What emerges, then, is an understanding of the history of the continent that places it firmly in the context of global conjunctures and repeated moments of reterritorialization.