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Fear has become central to social scientific understandings of contemporary insecurities. However, this article argues that a focus on fear is not sufficient, and that an exploration of ‘wonder’ is more productive, particularly when trying to understand modes of governance and policy regimes introduced as part of the ‘war on terror’. An appropriate starting point for such an exploration is the globalization of strangeness. The idea that globalization has undermined the familiar territoriality of a world of nation states has become accepted in the social science literature. However, the nature of the resulting unfamiliarity or strangeness of the world is rarely explored. This article focuses on the processes by means of which the world is rendered strange and examines the opportunities for new forms of governance opened up by a world designated as insecure, uncertain and unpredictable. The article pays particular attention to the ways in which this strangeness can generate ‘spaces of wonder’. Examples of such ‘spaces of wonder’ include ‘the world’, the UK's border, now offshore according to the Home Office, and ‘global borderlands’. The article advances a critical reading of contemporary political responses to ‘spaces of wonder’, particularly the ways in which the unknown and threatening are rendered in familiar and cosy terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I argue that, rather than focusing on the global diffusion of cricket and the reasons why it has been adopted in some countries but not others, the relationship between globalization and cricket is better understood in terms of the post-Westernization of the international game. The post-Westernization of cricket is associated with the rise to prominence of the One-Day International (ODI) vis-à-vis the more traditional Test match format and this, in turn, is associated with a shift in the balance of administrative power away from Lord's (in London) towards Asian cricket, centred on India, and the relocation of the ICC to Dubai. In this shift, the ODI has been utilized by India as the means to prise power away from the traditional centres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviewed in this essay: Ash Amin, Angus Cameron and Ray Hudson Placing the Social Economy London: Routledge Pontus Braunerhjelm, Ricardo Faini, Victor Norman, Frances Ruanences and Paul Seabright Integration and the Regions of Europe: How the Right Policies Can Prevent Polarization Christer Jonsson, Sven Tagil and Gunnar Tornqvist Organizing European Space [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]