Cricket is a sport which is currently undergoing a rapid and dramatic transformation. Traditionally thought of as an English summer game, limited in appeal to Britain and its Commonwealth, cricket has, in the past a few years, achieved a global profile. This is largely due to the development of a new TV-friendly format of the game: Twenty20 cricket. Indeed, through the economic and media interests promoting the Indian Premier League (IPL), the world’s richest Twenty20 tournament, cricket has belatedly ‘gone global’. The rapid rise of the IPL underlines that the economic and political characters within cricket are no longer the traditional elites in metropolitan centres but the businessmen of India and the media entrepreneurs world-wide who seek to shape new audiences for the game and create new marketing opportunities on a global scale. The contributions in this book fall into two broad categories. There are firstly those which explore the rapid growth of Twenty20, particularly the motors of change and the new directions that cricket is taking as a result of the Twenty20 revolution. Secondly, there are a number of contributions which chart the impact of Twenty20 on traditional elements of the game. This book was originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

The extent to which ordinary people can construct, shift, and dismantle borders is seriously neglected in the existing literature. The book explores the ability of citizens to participate in the making of borders, and the empowerment that can result from this bordering and debordering activity. ‘Borderwork’ is the name given to the ways in which ordinary people can make and unmake borders. Borderwork is no longer only the business of nation-states, it is also the business of citizens (and indeed non-citizens). This study of ‘borderwork’ extends the recent interest in forms of bordering which do not necessarily occur at the state’s external borders. However, the changing nature of borders cannot be reduced to a shift from the edges to the interior of a polity. To date little research has been conducted on the role of ordinary people in envisioning, constructing, maintaining, shifting, and erasing borders; creating borders which facilitate mobility for some while creating barriers to mobility for others; appropriating the political resources which bordering offers; contesting the legitimacy of or undermining the borders imposed by others. This book makes an original contribution to the literature and stands to set the agenda for a new dimension of border studies. This book was published as a special issue of Space and Polity.

Product Description: Cosmopolitan Borders makes the case for processes of bordering being better understood through the lens of cosmopolitanism. Borders are 'cosmopolitan workshops' where 'cultural encounters of a cosmopolitan kind' take place and where entrepreneurial cosmopolitans advance new forms of sociality in the face of 'global closure'...read more

Product Description: European Multiplicity does not conform to the expectations of a narrow EU studies agenda wherein European integration is seen as the destiny for the continent, each country (including non-members) being compelled to seek a place in an unfolding order "united in diversity"...read more

The European Union is the first full-length treatment of European integration from a sociological perspective. It redirects the core concerns of political sociology away from nationally bounded societies towards a "sociology beyond societies," capable of making a valuable contribution to thinking about the nature and problems of the European Union. Within this broad objective the book concerns itself with such key issues as the relation between the EU and globalization, the nature of the EU state, and the question of whether a European society can be said to exist. Students, scholars, and sociologists interested in the history, development, and legacies of the European Union will find this to be a unique and informative text.

Product Description: Cosmopolitan Spaces: Europe, Globalization, Theory endeavors a highly innovative reading of both globalization theory and contemporary European transformations. Interpreting cosmopolitanism as a politics of space, Rumford positions his analysis at the intersection of two exciting currents in contemporary social science research: the ‘spatial turn’ in the social sciences and the renewed interest in cosmopolitanism...read more

Product Description: Europe’s ongoing transformation has prompted the emergence of cosmopolitanism as a particularly relevant lens through which to analyze European politics and society. As the European Union grows in size, its member states are increasingly occupied with responsibilities that extend beyond their narrow national interests...read more

Product Description: Dominant approaches to the transformation of Europe ignore contemporary social theory interpretations of the nature and dynamics of social change. Here, Delanty and Rumford argue that we need a theory of society in order to understand Europeanization...read more

This book addresses the problem of cohesion in the European Union. It examines EU cohesion policies and other policies which significantly reduce the likelihood of cohesion being achieved. It challenges the idea that regional policy is a form of wealth distribution. It argues that cohesion, rather than being an objective in its own right, has been systematically redefined as a tool of competitiveness, and that neo-liberal economic priorities have led to the privileging of regional autonomy over cohesion. (view table of contents)