University of Chicago Press Mixed Emotions – Beyond Fear and Hatred in International Conflict

Product Description In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that emotion plays a central role in global politics. For example, people readily care about acts of terrorism and humanitarian crises because they appeal to our compassion for human suffering. These struggles also command attention where social interactions have the power to produce or intensify the emotional responses of those who participate in them. From passionate protests to poignant speeches, Andrew A. G. Ross analyzes high-emotion events with an eye to how they shape public perception and finds that there is no single answer. The politically powerful play to the public's emotions to advance their political aims, and such appeals to emotion often serve to sustain existing values and institutions. But the affective dimension can also produce profound change, particularly when a struggle in the present can be shown to line up with emotionally resonant events from the past. Extending his findings to well-studied conflicts, including the "war on terror" and the violence in Rwanda and the Balkans, Ross identifies important sites of emotional impact missed by earlier research focused on identities and institutional interests. Review "Mixed Emotions showcases in-depth and wide-ranging thinking about emotions and the work they do. . . . [Ross's book] deserves an important place in the body of scholarship that is increasingly putting emotions on the map of mainstream political science."-- "Theory & Event" (9/5/2014 12:00:00 AM) "A needed challenge to the rationalist perspective of much of IR theory, one which takes the potential of emotions seriously. [Ross] paints emotions not as the unreliable contaminants of Enlightenment thought, but rather as creative forces with the potential to inspire, heal, and forge movements for change through what he calls collective agency. It is also anti-essentialist: by theorizing ways that interactions and connections can happen across demographics, groups, and spaces, Ross enables us to look at conflicts like those in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia without relying on static understandings of ethnicity and identity. Scholars and practitioners of transitional justice, as well as IR theorists, should find this book very useful and interesting."-- "LSE Review of Books" "Drawing from the Rwandan genocide, the conflict on the Balkans, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United State, Ross outlines an original and convincing argument for why emotional politics is an area that deserves further attention."-- "International Affairs" (1/26/2015 12:00:00 AM) "Research on emotions is burgeoning in international relations, and Ross's new book makes the most persuasive case yet for the analytical potential of studying emotions in global politics. . . . Mixed Emotions offers a wealth of analyses and insights that mark it as a key text not only for those interested in emotions and global conflict, but for students and scholars interested theories of IR more broadly. . . . [It] blazes new trails in thinking about the central role of emotions in such weighty issues as agency, intentionality, the individual and collective, terrorism, war, and peace." -- "International Studies Review" (12/15/2015 12:00:00 AM) "Ross's book is an absolute must-read for students, scholars, and foreign policy practitioners. . . . Mixed Emotions thoroughly and clearly recasts the concept of agency for IR theory. . . Ross aims to reconceptualize this fundamental concept to reveal how emotions lie 'at the heart of political practice in the modern world.' Attempting to revolutionize an academic discipline's understanding of a concept as fundamental as agency to IR has the potential to be a momentous and unwieldy task. However, Ross effectively does so in just 162 pages."-- "H-DIPLO" (7/31/2014 12:00:00 AM) "Ross's examination of what he describes as the 'neuropolitics of incitement' produces some of this book's most insightful and interesting