As human rights promotion gradually comes to rival development and democratization in the Western policy pantheon, more human rights–related books appear each year. Only a minority of these are empirically and methodologically rigorous, however, and even fewer are theoretically adventurous. Stephen Hopgood's unique study of Amnesty International is thus a welcome contribution from a political scientist with anthropological instincts, and it is likely to become a classic in the field. Hopgood immersed himself for over a year in Amnesty's culture, rituals, and politics, and then interpreted this data with insights from Emile Durkheim and Pierre Bourdieu. He writes clearly and well, and his interpretations should appeal to students of transnational organizing, human rights, and international affairs, broadly conceived.

The book's underlying thesis is that the Western human rights movement is a secular religion whose spiritual and organizational core is Amnesty International. Hopgood treats the group as a tribe worthy of ethnographic analysis, studying Amnesty's London-based “International Secretariat” much as one might perceive global Catholicism through the prism of Vatican politics. His interpretations are provocative and important, and the book is likely to be read, and reread, for years to come.

For students of international organizations, one of the book's most intriguing elements is the author's representation of the Amnesty employee experience. Although the organization is devoted to promoting empathy, its workplace dynamics are anything but compassionate. Staffers told Hopgood that they often felt miserable and exhausted, and that higher-status employees often bullied their juniors. These findings are shocking, but he does a good job of explaining how Amnesty's “shadow side” is reproduced through an organizational culture of overwork, dedication, and monklike self-flagellation.

Amnesty was formed in the early 1960s, and as Hopgood suggests, its early adherents were seeking alternatives to both organized religion and socialism. In its first decades, supporters conducted letter writing campaigns in support of carefully selected “prisoners of conscience,” appealing to middle-class sympathizers familiar with Christian narratives of individual sacrifice and heroism. Although the early Amnesty cadre tended toward the political Left, their activist inclinations were liberal, privileging research and polite letters over militant, radical solidarity. Amnesty's staffers were dedicated, self-sacrificing, and entirely committed to key liberal principles, such as due process and fair play.

During its first decades, the group worked hard to project an image of sober respectability. It distributed its attentions equally across the First, Second, and Third Worlds, barred members from working on abuses within their own countries, and carefully screened prospective prisoners of conscience for nonviolence. This strategy paid off in 1977 with a Nobel Peace Prize, dramatically boosting the group's reputation. By the end of the 1980s, Amnesty International was, for many, synonymous with the term “human rights.” This is especially true in political science, where virtually every major quantitative human rights study uses a five-point “Political Terror Scale” based on Amnesty's annual reports. Other institutions take careful note of Amnesty's annual country commentaries. As Steven Poe and colleagues have shown, for example, the U.S. State Department's annual human rights reports have converged over time with those of the London-based nongovernmental organization. Although Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and others produce excellent material, Amnesty's analyses are still regarded by many as the final word.

The human rights idiom spread like wildfire after the Cold War, displacing discredited leftist narratives and, in some cases, joining forces with feminism, environmentalism, and development. Some Western governments also voiced their support, funding a slew of policy initiatives that transformed nongovernmental groups across the Global South into “human rights”–promoting entities. New members flooded Amnesty's ranks in the Western world, and the group's operating budget grew apace. The 1990s witnessed what Michael Ignatieff aptly dubs a “rights revolution,” and Amnesty was beautifully positioned to ride the wave.

Abundance of members and resources proved to be a Trojan horse of sorts, however, creating bitter conflicts between the group's old guard, dubbed by Hopgood “Keepers of the Flame,” and a new generation of activists with very different ideas. The new guard was impatient with the Keepers' caution and impartiality, believing that the organization's moral authority was being needlessly squandered. Keepers were wasting too much time in careful research, and were missing important opportunities for generating positive change through media-savvy politicking. The reformers also argued that the old guard was too white, male, and Western, and that Amnesty's focus on a few core civil and political rights was far too narrow.

The new guard initiated many important changes, bringing in new and culturally diverse managers; building up the organization's campaign, media, and fund-raising capacities; and reconfiguring Amnesty's research so that it fed directly into advocacy. The organization has moved away from its focus on prisoners of conscience and political and civil rights. It now works on a range of diverse economic, social, and gender rights, and is far closer to a solidarity model of activism. These changes have been bitterly resisted by the Keepers, however, many of whom fear that the reformers are destroying Amnesty's impartial reputation. Hopgood does a fine job of walking us through the struggle for Amnesty's soul, explaining how these battles raged even while the group's budget, membership, and reputation soared.

Here, the implications go much further than Amnesty. On the one hand, human rights organizations are the world's moral stenographers, impartially recording acts of brutality, oppression, and discrimination. To maintain their credibility, they must speak in calm and measured tones, adopting the mannerisms of international lawyers and diplomats. Yet human rights abuses are also raw and emotional things, and genuine struggles for freedom require impassioned, politically engaged campaigns. Amnesty is not alone in vacillating between these two different roles, of course; many advocacy groups are similarly torn. Some, such as Human Rights Watch, may be situated closer to the impartial side of the continuum, but this is often a deeply frustrating position to occupy. When observing slow-motion genocides such as the one occurring in Darfur, advocacy groups are tempted each day to yell more loudly and stridently, relying more and more on politicized methods of persuasion.

Hopgood also thoughtfully analyzes the sources of North–South cleavages within the global human rights community. The tactics, images, and narratives that made Amnesty a household world in the Global North do not translate well in the Global South, and time and again, southern Amnesty chapters have disappeared without a trace. Although Amnesty claims to be a global, transnational movement for justice, it has sunk very few roots in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Hopgood offers various explanations for these failures, the most convincing of which is that Amnesty's ethos and organizational style draw too heavily on Western Christianity, liberalism, and bureaucratic rationality.

On this count, the jury is still out. Human rights groups have sprung up all over the world, but most of them are heavily dependent on foreign funds. To be sure, the rights idiom has sunk deep roots in Latin America and Eastern Europe, where long histories of constitutionalism provide receptive environments. Elsewhere, however, the prospects for sustainable, indigenous “human rights” movements seem less promising. People everywhere are keen for justice, equality, and dignity, but it is still unclear whether universal human rights standards can form the basis for a truly global civil society. As Hopgood's book makes abundantly clear, it is devilishly difficult to build a representative, transnational movement for justice, even with the best of intentions.