The Ambivalence of Good examines the genesis and evolution of
international human rights politics since the 1940s. Focusing on
key developments such as the shaping of the UN human rights system,
decolonization, the rise of Amnesty International, the campaigns
against the Pinochet dictatorship, the moral politics of Western
governments, or dissidence in Eastern Europe, the book traces how
human rights profoundly, if subtly, transformed global affairs.
Moving beyond monocausal explanations and narratives prioritizing
one particular decade, such as the 1940s or the 1970s, The
Ambivalence of Good argues that we need a complex and nuanced
interpretation if we want to understand the truly global reach of
human rights, and account for the hopes, conflicts, and
interventions to which this idea gave rise. Thus, it portrays the
story of human rights as polycentric, demonstrating how actors in
various locales imbued them with widely different meanings, arguing
that the political field evolved in a fitful and discontinuous
process. This process was shaped by consequential shifts that
emerged from the search for a new world order during the Second
World War, decolonization, the desire to introduce a new political
morality into world affairs during the 1970s, and the visions of a
peaceful international order after the end of the Cold War.
Finally, the book stresses that the projects pursued in the name of
human rights nonetheless proved highly ambivalent. Self-interest
was as strong a driving force as was the desire to help people in
need, and while international campaigns often improved the fate of
the persecuted, they were equally likely to have counterproductive
effects. The Ambivalence of Good provides the first research-based
synopsis of the topic and one of the first synthetic studies of a
transnational political field (such as population, health, or the
environment) during the twentieth century. Based on archival
research in six countries, it breaks new empirical ground
concerning the history of human rights in the United Nations, of
human rights NGOs, of far-flung mobilizations, and of the uses of
human rights in state foreign policy.
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