“This is a big, bold book on an important subject. Andrew A. G. Ross advances novel arguments about emotion as a social process and illustrates his argument through three fascinating case studies. The big picture he draws is compelling and raises large, important questions about how we currently understand global politics. Potentially pathbreaking, the book opens a new field of inquiry which scholars in the field are just beginning to explore in a systematic way.”

Janice Gross Stein, University of Toronto

“In this engrossing, utterly persuasive study, Andrew A. G. Ross elucidates a political theory of mixed and fluid emotions. From mirror neurons to collective agency, from microsociology to mass media, he shows how emotions not only suffuse social life in every conceivable setting but also unsettle it in politically significant ways. With Ross’s help, students of social construction can finally move beyond language and identity to processes of embodied interaction.”

Nicholas Onuf, Florida International University

“Mixed Emotions makes a pathbreaking contribution to an increasingly important scholarly debate: the study of emotions in international politics. Drawing on case studies that range from protest movements to terrorism and from ethnic conflict to transitional justice, Andrew A. G. Ross convincingly reveals how the ‘circulation of affect’ spreads collective emotions over time and across spatial boundaries.”

Roland Bleiker, University of Queensland

“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

“Ross’s examination of what he describes as the ‘neuropolitics of incitement’ produces some of this book’s most insightful and interesting passages.”

Times Higher Education

“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

“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

“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

“This book, by theorizing emotions in a serious, deep, and multidisciplinary way, not only provides a corrective to the mistaken duality in which emotions and rationality are set apart and never the twain shall meet, but also it sets forth a fresh account of emotions that will likely shape the future of emotions and affect research in international relations. . . . One of the most impressive aspects of Ross’s book is the careful tracing of circulation of affect in particular conflicts. The chapter on “the affective politics of terror” is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the collective response by the United States to the September 11 attacks. . . . This is an important book that may well be viewed as pathbreaking in an important second wave of emotions research in international relations.”

Political Science Quarterly

"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