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Public relations and historical sociology: Historiography as reflexive critique
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Public Relations Review
Public relations and historical sociology: Historiography as reflexive critique Jacquie L’Etang Queen Margaret University, Scotland
a r t i c l e
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Article history: Received 6 September 2013 Received in revised form 2 December 2013 Accepted 29 December 2013 Keywords: History Historiography Historical sociology Models
a b s t r a c t The essay focuses on thinking about thinking about PR history. The space between history and sociology encompasses theoretical and conceptual frames and can be drawn upon to consider PR in time, across times and between times. It reflects upon the purposes and practices of historical sociology and foregrounds themes relevant to public relations, its histories and methodological approaches. The paper, which is methodological at the strategic rather than the technical level, argues that public relations historians can usefully engage with theoretical issues and problems delineated in historical sociology and historical theory. Evolutionary, functionalist and typological approaches and the cultural logics of historical periodization are discussed and contextualized. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction This article aims to problematize the strategic choices and processes of historical work and historical theorizing in relation to public relations. The form of problematization is derived from the ‘interfacial political theory/cultural studies [that] involves critical reading and theoretical interrogation of [accepted] practices’ (Dean, 2008: 755). The essay is located within the humanities tradition (drawing on historical theory, and historical sociological sources, and political science) to explore and discuss ideas, and builds on similar work that has engaged discursively with paradigmatic issues in history such as Brown (2006), Vos (2011), Bentele (1997, 2004, 2013), L’Etang (1995, 2004, 2008a, 2008b, 2010). The aim is neither a critique nor a catalogue of existing histories, nor does it seek to build a particular theoretical or global approach to PR history. Instead, the intention is to focus on strategic level methodological choices that be realized by reflection on historical sociology and historical theory. Historical sociology is a useful source from which to develop PR historical projects beyond narrative and presents opportunities for theoretically diverse critical insights, alternative conceptualizations and constructs of public relations, its histories and its historical thinkers. Such self-reflection is not indulgent, but an important aspect of historical writing. Because history writing entails not only interpretation and description but also explanation, it is reflexivity (Brincker & Gundelach, 2005; Holland, 1999), that becomes essential ‘in the moment’ of literary creation as the habitus (Bourdieu, 1984) and ‘thought styles’ (Fleck, 1979/1935) of public relations scholars (many of whom have worked in public relations practice) influence their approaches and theoretical dispositions. Analysis of the logics of historical explanation in public relations demonstrated the dominance of societal and actor-centred functionalist explanations that legitimated the practice uncritically in tandem with progressivist and evolutionary influences (Vos, 2011). Since public relations inhabits dialectical societal spaces and is concerned with change agents and change processes, PR histories necessarily raise questions that demand interrogation from social theory and political science and engagement
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with paradigmatic influences from these broader fields. This ambitious scope can be more readily realized when refracted through the lens of historical sociology to reference structural/processual dynamics and social theory. Since a number of social theorists have explored evolutionary change, and public relations activities typically emerge at points of emerging change, transformations and contestation, the intersection of history and sociology provides a space to explore public relations as an historical and sociological phenomenon in multiple political and cultural contexts, for example: nationalism, national identity, nation branding and public diplomacy; institutionalization; professionalization in ‘professional society’ (Perkin, 1989); social movements and activism. The argument presented here is that the emerging genre of public relations history and historiography can usefully engage with historical sociology, historical theory, social and political theory to generate more reflexive insights to contextualize PR histories, PR history writing, the PR academic discipline, and PR in socio-cultural contexts. 2. History and theory History deals with non-existing past realities and anonymities (Partner, 2013: 2; van der Dussen, 2013: 45) and the challenges of history-writing cannot be under-estimated (L’Etang, 1995, 2004, 2008a, 2008b). The definition of a field of inquiry or a historical subject, topic or theme is underpinned by epistemological and ontological assumptions and, as in all humanistic research, the subject position of the author. The motivation for historical research is important, for example whether authors are ‘achieved’ or ‘ascribed’ insiders or outsiders taking a particular political, intellectual or moral stance (Smith, 1991: 156–168). For example, in public relations the fact that a public relations historian does or does not have professional experience in public relations (and whether that is in consultancy or in-house) matters because it raises challenges with regard to detachment and involvement. The values and assumptions of PR history writers are significant and need acknowledgement (as was the case in Olasky’s classic pro-business PR history (Olasky, 1987), likewise inherited disciplinary, occupational and socio-cultural conscious and unconscious burdens of the past for example, functionalism, propaganda, US Progressivism, colonialism). Historical scholarship is subject to ideological and political influences and as with all literary and linguistic communication is necessarily interpretive. Pre-suppositional choices that underpin historical scholarship are central to the interpretation of historical sources and texts. History is important to the politics of the PR discipline so the articulation of historical and sociological paradigms and themes in relation to those in the public relations discipline is significant. As a reflexive practice, public relations history demands not only self-awareness with regard to historiographical debates and issues. History has been ‘traditionally located within the humanities for a reason’, and PR history writing demands historical consciousness but also historical imagination (van der Dussen, 2013) and sensitivity to the notion of historicity – reflections and actions informed by history. Historical consciousness and imagination are concepts that brought into play both the experiential and the universal features of history as a necessary aspect of constructed realities (Collingwood, 1974). Societal structures and politics shape national, cultural and institutional contexts and within them, power relations, dominance and hegemonic tendencies. Paradigms such as historical realism, structuralism, structuralist Marxism, deconstruction and modernization theses provide contexts for understanding power dynamics such as interlocking forces (Althusser, 1971) that constrain or facilitate occupational, professional and practitioner agency and communication power (Castells, 2009). Ideological componentry and assumptions are not only relevant in terms of the relationships for example between PR capitalism, democracy, commodification, but in terms of the historical use of such categories; their consequential ideological or rhetorical deployment vis a vis PR; and their overall explanatory value. Dialectical relations between past and present throw up discontinuities, genealogical similarities and challenge notions of historical objectivity. In drawing together these insights, one can appreciate that history operates as discursive patterns of values, narrative, social theory and explanation (Hall, 1992). It also operates as an heuristic device that allows categorization the deployment of which generates insights about ongoing and changing cultural and creative practices (Rigney, 2013: 184) bearing in mind, on a cultural account, PR’s role as cultural service provider. History thinking and writing is interpretive and rhetorical, an argumentative process, not a catalogue. Archives may be sources, but without broader level theoretical interpretation they are simply partial fragments of past human activities. 3. Theorizing history in societal contexts: framing PR historical research The relationship between theory and history frames historiographical reflection and analysis. Philosophy of history has tended to assume rather than interrogate history in the exploration of ideas such as historical cycles, spirals, dialectical encounters, upheavals, or what counts as true information about past reality (Partner, 2013: 2). Historiography is paradigmatic, for example nationalist, statist, institutional, progressive, subaltern, and postcolonial. Historiography itself is a product of the professionalization of memory, collective and societal memories and archives and memorialization that is engaged in agentic legitimacy and identity projects as opposed to the history of everyday life (Giesen & Junge, 2003: 332). Historical theory is not a ‘theory of history’ or unified system but, ‘A coherent yet flexible framework which supports analyses of historical knowledge, and assists our understanding of what kind of knowledge we can have of the past, and precisely how that knowledge is constructed, assembled and presented. In this sense of a framework of conceptual instruments for examining our knowledge of the past, theory Please cite this article in press as: L’Etang, J. Public relations and historical sociology: Historiography as reflexive critique. Public Relations Review (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.12.009
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is metahistorical: it does its work as an adjunct operation opening out the reach of critical awareness we bring to our assumptions and practice as historians. . .Historical theory does not mean. . .explaining or predicting the course of world events in the manner of older styles of philosophy of history. . .The purpose of theory directed to written history is the deep analysis of historical knowledge, for the sake of intellectual transparency and disciplinary self-regulation, and if theory is the category term collecting together the instruments of analysis, it requires a stable defined object on which to work. A theoretical scrutiny addresses the procedures and operations involved in the making of written history above the level of its constituent statement-facts and trains an intense light on the construction of chronology, causal trajections, selection and emphasis, value-laden language, and interpretation in the fullest sense’. (Partner, 2013: 1, 3) The concepts of sociological history and historical sociology have been deployed to understand the dynamics between society, culture, power, events, change and everyday life. The terms were distinguished to mark a difference in methodological emphasis and approach in terms of the dominant approach within the research strategy. In the same way that in a social science mixed-methods approach one set of epistemological and ontological assumptions will tend to drive the research and its analysis with the supplementary methods there for purposes of triangulation and complementary data, so the balance between history and social theory may vary in terms of direction, focus and style. Historical sociology uses historical data to support sociological interpretation and analysis, for example, seeing PR as part of social processes, structuration, discursive practices linked to historical developments and changes in those processes in ways that are contextual, interrogative and disruptive. Sociological history tackles broad social issues using sociological concepts such as class, gender, sexuality linked to historical narrative and explanation. Such approaches may throw up questions beyond history that are of central importance to understand contemporary practice. For example an historical materialist view focusing on labour and production might generate questions around the social relations of PR production – what is produced and by whom? What is the nature of labour power in public relations? What value is produced and by whom? How is capital deployed, invested and generated in these processes and who benefits economically and socially? Historical sociology is a theory-driven approach to history, using historical data for an explicitly sociological purpose, that, ‘uses social theory in a self-conscious way to outline general propositions about the nature of historical development’ (Kelley, 2013: 9), and, ‘Investigate[s] the mutual interpenetration of past and present, events and processes, acting and structuration. . .[marries] conceptual clarification, comparative generalization and empirical exploration’. (Smith, 1991: 3) It is an approach that considers events, contexts and concepts both of the period under review and the times within which the analysis is conducted, so it can be multi-layered and self-referential, for example, historical sociologists have analyzed the emergence of their own sub-discipline in terms of successive ‘waves’ (Carroll, 2009: 553–554). The approach has potential for public relations because it is politically and ideologically inflected in relation to public issues and change. It has focused on modernization theory, modern liberal thought, totalitarianism, transformations in modernity, and the emergence of public relations practice has often been linked to one or more of these societal phenomena (Delanty & Isin, 2003: 1–8). Modernization theory has been defined as ‘an offshoot of the dominant functionalist sociology of the 1950s’ comprised of a range of ideas suggesting that ‘there was one way to be modern and that developing societies could and should follow the examples of Western Europe and the United States to achieve this. . .’ (Calhoun, Rojek, & Turner, 2005: 4). Totalitarian domination, associated with propaganda has been identified as a facet of modernism (Bauman, 1991 in Calhoun et al., 2005: 5). Historicized critiques of public relations and its role in democratic practice, links to propaganda, and the spread of neoliberalism are already present in the literature (Dinan & Miller, 2007; Miller & Dinan, 2008). Given the agentic nature of public relations there is clearly scope for the historical analysis of PR’s role in the cultural workings of power contextualized with political theory and political science that, ‘addresses the historical and contemporary relations among subjects, rationalities and practices that go under the name of the political’ (Dean, 2008: 753) and central to histories of public affairs, lobbying, activism and their contribution to specification not only through the production of difference through discursive practices but through relational strategies and the accumulation of relational and other capitals that contribute to power differentials and deployment. Indeed, as communications historian Charles Tilly pointed out, ‘explanatory political science [within which political public relations, public affairs and lobbying may be legitimately situated] can hardly get anywhere without relying on careful historical analysis’ (Tilly, 2011: 521). Thus public relations histories that encompass these specialisms may also scaffold their historical analysis with political theory and political science. The implications for practising PR historians is that historical research requires preparatory mapping (literary and/or graphic) of relevant historical and sociological paradigms, linked, where appropriate to conceptual frames that are already present in the PR field to create theoretical layering that contextualizes research strategy and questions, empirical data and interpretive processes. For example, postcolonial and subaltern perspectives demonstrate very clearly that history is a genre within which multiple discourses are at play for example: dominance, domination, subordination, accommodation and resistance. Historical events include: conquest, legitimacy struggles, counter-hegemony, loss, apologia and redemption, themes that also inhabit PR organizational work (Dutta-Bergman, 2005; Munshi & Kurian, 2007). Postcolonial perspectives challenge official statist nationalism and acknowledge diasporic perspectives. For example, colonialism shaped international and inter-cultural public relations practices in the UK and its themes and assumptions are clearly present in the archive of
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the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (L’Etang, 2004). Yet relatively little penetrates mainstream PR literature about the role of PR in colonial history and de-colonization either within government circles, or within the colonies either in the UK or other former colonial powers (but see Smyth, 2001; L’Etang & Muruli, 2004). Contributions that encompass global perspectives also need to take account of varied, alternative and competing logics rather than imposing neo-liberal and developmental frameworks on culturally specific practices of societal communication and change. Global and historical perspectives are open to critique since these are largely written from a US or European perspective and may impose agendas. Indeed, one impact of subaltern studies is its very challenge to totalizing histories, specifically national histories. Guha argued that there were distinct differences in the histories of power in colonial India and Europe and thus separated the history of power in global modernity from a universal history of capital (Chakrabarty, 2003: 196). Subaltern theorists challenged European historiography (based on progressivist development from peasant to factory worker to self awareness and citizen or revolutionary action) because Indian subalterns were activists during and after colonialism. Postcolonial theories influence the way in which public relations histories link to public communication and public diplomacy perspectives and have conceptual and practical implications for the structuring and methods of projects, especially where there may be an implicit over-dependence on official and statist archives and stories.
4. Historiographical issues in PR Historiographical issues that have arisen to date in PR relate to: definitions and scope of the field; the use of typologies as explanation; periodization. Debates have focused on the relationship between PR and public communication; the inclusion or exclusion of propaganda; the questionable dominance of a culturally specific explanatory framework based on specialist functions/paradigmatic features of PR work; tendencies to evolutionary progressivism (L’Etang, 1995, 2004, 2008a, 2008b). These discussions are complicated by the fact that some concepts simultaneously function historically, but also as conceptual frameworks, for example, propaganda may be located in particular eras or as state, activist or corporate practices, or positioned morally as a binary opposite to PR practice, or conceptualized as a particular media communication conceptual and graphic model. Likewise rhetoric, which retains a connection to PR through discursive practices may also be interpreted as part of the historical origins but also as the history of moral critique of persuasive communication – so rhetoric can be re-constructed as a contemporary realization of a social role – as well as being a major paradigm within the discipline and part of its structural and political dynamics (L’Etang, 1996). Delineating the terminology is dependent on historians’ individual paradigmatic positioning – functionalist, interpretive, radical humanism/critical – as well as within the common approaches within the PR discipline that could currently be sketched as: excellence/strategic management, rhetoric/discourse, communitarian/civil society, socio-cultural, critical, gender/LGBT, postcolonial/subaltern, and race. Public relations history can be defined in a narrow way to the first or early usages of the Anglo-Saxon term or equivalents in other languages (in itself a discursive move that privileges Anglo-Saxon cultures and definitions) relating to a recognized occupation similar to that which operates today. It is this sort of narrow definition that largely that shapes occupational/’professional’ histories. As a number of public relations historians have acknowledged there appears to be some ‘pre-history’ of comparable activities including propaganda, often involving the same people (L’Etang, 2004). A broader approach permits the inclusion of a wider range of historical activities (publicity, government information, and propaganda) within the scope of PR history. This fundamental issue over definitions and scope is part of the long-running debate over public relations/communication management/strategic communications/corporate communications definitions and nomenclature, and the rationale for these distinctions are themselves a worthy object of detailed historical inquiry. Bentele (2013) argued that there were two main types of historiography in public relations ‘fact or event-based [or] model and theory-based’ (Bentele, 2013: 246), commenting, ‘It is clear that a PR historiography which has models of this type [‘the’ four models] is much more grounded in theory than the simpler type of fact-based PR. . .not only the description. . .but rather. . .the explanation’. (Bentele, 2013: 248–249) Bentele’s analysis of public relations histories contrasts what he classifies as factual accumulation, systematization and cataloguing of ‘facts’ that lacks ‘any type of theoretical grounding’ (Bentele, 2013: 248). However, this is not strictly correct. The collection of data will indeed have been influenced by the researchers’ paradigmatic world views, epistemological and ontological frameworks, it is simply that these have not necessarily been laid bare. In short, some PR history is empiricist. Bentele’s reference to ‘fact-based PR’ assumes that ‘facts’ are unproblematic and also downplays the role of interpretation and argument. Not every historical analysis may be on the grand scale (longue durée) but that does not mean to say that fine detail is not open to a range of theoretical interpretations, for example, sociology of work and professions, notions of ideology, or harnessing feminism or queer theory. Furthermore, even so-called ‘fact-based’ PR histories will be based on underlying assumptions and theoretical frameworks that influence the writing. A central purpose of this article has been to highlight the importance of reflexivity and transparency in PR history writing. Bentele’s solution is to argue for modelbased approaches to historiography (giving the example of ‘the four models’) because he believes they are theory-based and therefore offer more historical explanation. However, framework or ‘model’ approaches tend to be focused on linear explanation and functionality rather than, for example, the histories of interstices of power and influence in relation to PR activities. Please cite this article in press as: L’Etang, J. Public relations and historical sociology: Historiography as reflexive critique. Public Relations Review (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.12.009
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Another issue relates to the nature and extent of ‘theory’. In the case of ‘the four models’ the theory was a normative typology derived from US historical and cultural context. Bentele refers to Grunig’s unpublished manuscript revising his seminal 1984 text (co-authored with Hunt) that was evidently sent to a number of scholars (myself included) in the mid1990s. In this Grunig presented the model as a history of ideas about public relations. Perhaps these revisions were the consequence of a reading and re-reading of US literature on PR historiography (Pearson, 1992; Olasky, 1987) and earlier efforts to understand the role of public relations in US society (Pimlott, 1952); but also maybe by his European excursions where a number of scholars were presenting alternative approaches to PR history (Ronneberger & Rühl, 1992; L’Etang, 1995; Bentele, 1997). It is useful to position Bentele’s approach to historiography in relation to its antecedents, influences and paradigmatic history, not to mention its likely ongoing influence in the field of public relations. There appears to be a traceable link to positivism via Comte. Comte’s ideas in relation to historical analysis were a variant of his comparative method that had a biological view of societal structure and dynamics (Turner, 2001: 33). This idea appears in Bentele’s functional-integrative stratification approach based on evolutionary biology and developmental psychology (Bentele, 2013: 251). Comte’s approach to history examined the movement of ideas and structures with a view to formulating these into laws of human organization (Turner, 2001: 34). Not dissimilarly, Bentele’s stratification model seeks principles of the social evolution of communication, communication systems and social systems (Luhmann, 1995) that can then be aligned to periodization models (Bentele, 2013: 256). Vos also noted in his analysis of historical logics in public relations, ‘The logic of functional explanation. . .is borrowed from biology’ (Vos, 2011: 122). Bentele’s model may be a structuring structure (Bourdieu, 1984) whose classification processes may appear objective but bolster functionalism as a disposition within the field of public relations historical scholarship, its habitus and spaces. Public relations historiography has already been strongly influenced by the US-based typology of ‘the four models’ of practice that transmogrified into a progressivist historical explanatory framework (L’Etang, 1995, 2004, 2008a, 2008b; Bentele, 2010), but caution is needed with typological approaches because they do not always reveal their fundamental underpinnings, as Bourdieu cautioned in relation to claims made about scientific classifications (of populations). ‘The observer. . .has no chance of bringing to the level of consciousness the true status of his classifying operations which, like native knowledge, presuppose connections and comparisons and which, even when they seem to belong to the realm of social physics, in fact produce and interpret signifying distinctions, in short belong to the realm of the symbolic’. (Bourdieu, 1984: 172) Historical sociologists ‘concur that evolutionary theories build too much presumption of “progress” and necessity into patterns of historical change that bring evil as well as good and reveal the results of purposive human action even if the results are not always what actors intend’ (Calhoun et al., 2005: 3). The problematics of colligation (which also include arbitrariness, politics, rhetorical) alluded to above in terms of its crude application to public relations definitions (a typology) and as a single explanation of developments in PR US history that has dominated both conceptual and historical developments world-wide and strongly influenced by progressivism, instrumentalism and evolutionist remain today. At least initially, colligation in PR lacked self-analysis and reflexiveness with regard to the motivation behind colligatory efforts for example nostalgia, dominance, romance, as Toohey remarked, ‘Periodization is seductive. At its simplest it comforts. Regularizing, packaging and calibrating the apparent disorder of the historical record, positing chronological or intellectual blocks, it creates a type of order. . .simplifies memorization. . .assists instruction. . .romantic. . .profoundly deceptive. . .’. (Toohey, 2003: 209) It seems that morality tales are a feature of public relations’ self-mythologizing and discourse, part of its long-standing legitimacy struggles. To be sure, historians should be sensitive to their rhetorical role. One important development within historical sociology and historical theory has been the emergence of memory studies, a perspective that adds a different dimension to the dualism between those who hold to the narrow definitions of PR history and those who are more inclusive in their definition. Memory studies emerged in the 1980s and is particularly relevant to history that draws on oral sources (informants) for testimony that chronicles events and personal experiences for documentary purposes (Giesen & Junge, 2003; Hutton, 2013). The role of collective memory is central to the understanding of tradition, culture, nation-building and nationalism. Memory studies also encompasses psycho-history, psychoanalysis and collective memories, approaches that are not only relevant to the interpretation of events and for, example the trauma and empathy relevant to risk and crisis, or particular cases, but to the understanding of occupational and institutional memories that contribute to occupational/professional mythologies. At a societal level memory studies also offers perspectives on the politics of commemoration and heritage that directly links to the history of public relations constructed more broadly as public communication. There is also a link to the use of psychoanalytic approaches within public relations or the application of psychoanalytic concepts to understand public relations (Fawkes, 2012). The pre-modern period itself should not be excluded as a focus of exploration, particularly given that this era is already present within the public relations historical canon. Ruling out the pre-modern and the ancients as does Bentele in his functional-integrative stratification model (2013) to focus on PR as a social system and PR as an occupational field and profession closes down imaginative understandings of PR type activities and ideas from a humanities perspective. Public relations may be seen as connected with much earlier cultural beliefs and practices outside the scientific and the rational. The scientization of public relations mitigates against the exploration of its mythical and spiritual practices; its meaning-making in organizational cults, and its apparently interstitial position Please cite this article in press as: L’Etang, J. Public relations and historical sociology: Historiography as reflexive critique. Public Relations Review (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.12.009
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between beliefs, values and cultural mythologies. Therefore, within PR historiography, modernization, progressivism and scientization theses have to be perceived and understood as value choices that endeavour to shape understandings of PR history and historical work in the field. 5. Reflections Public relations historical work is the process of thinking and writing about the history of meaning generation and the circulation of discourses, ideas and networks linked to agency, structures, power, hegemony, ideology and communicative action. Public relations history-making and thinking is located at the interstices of history, philosophy and social science and is a literary creation exploring complex configurations that can generate critical perspectives of public relations history, open to reinterpretations and re-representation. Public relations histories can usefully go beyond causality and the linkage of events to engage with the broader landscape of historical sociology in order to contextualize empirical findings and contribute towards a re-evaluation of PR and the academic discipline in society and the thinking processes employed in the conceptualization around these, indeed, ‘If we are to tackle. . .history in the field of public relations then we do have to deal with questions of power, structure, social theory and relationships in society and put some work into theorizing their significance for concepts we use. For example, we need to explore the history of the evolution of concepts of “activist groups’ which so clearly articulate the relationship between applied public relations researchers . . .and researched (“activist group”) as one of “Self and Other”. The concept of “Other” has been debated on ethnographic research and raises a fundamental problem. . .How can we avoid the subjugation of publics to organizations? We need to de-centre public relations history and discourse. We also need the history of the context of concept evolution in order to relate specific developments in public relations to political and social events and theory. For example, the perceptions of public relations activities directed at activist groups. . .there is a role for phenomenological research. . .there is work to be done in making connections between public relations concepts and theory to ideologies of liberalism, capitalism, socialism and managerialism. . .[furthermore] a more anthropological approach to public relations history could liberate different cultural approaches to public relations’. (L’Etang, 1995: 27) This article has argued that it is important to incorporate the socio-cultural and political contexts into PR history writing and to acknowledge ideological, ontological and epistemological assumptions that have shaped the researcher’s approach to the topic. Thus PR histories should be theorized at multiple levels not in terms of the ‘object’ of such work, but in terms of a broader politics and societal dynamics as well as ‘between the hyphens’ relating past to present and imagined futures and making transparent any normative ideals. The article has again challenged simplistic colligation as well as detailed description of Gradgrind1 -ish ‘facts’ at the expense of context. It therefore argues for PR histories that locate work within historical sociology and engage with historical and social theory in order to create nuanced dialectical histories that reflect the dynamic between the past that no longer exists, the history of thought and thinking, the imagination, the moment of writing, contemporary assumptions and the anticipations of the future. References Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes toward an investigation). In Lenin and philosophy and other essays (Trans. B. Brewster). New York: Monthly Review Press. Bauman, Z. (1991). The holocaust and modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bentele, G. (1997). PR-Historiograhie und functional-integrative Schchtung. Ein neuer Ansatz zur PR-Geschichtssschreibung. In P. Szyszka (Ed.), Auf der Suche nach einer identitat. PR-Geschichte als Theoriesbaustein (In search of identity: PR history as a building block for PR theory) (pp. 137–169). Berlin: Vistas. Bentele, G. (2010). 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1 Mr. Gradgrind was a character in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times who may be interpreted as representing the zeitgeist of industrial capitalism. He valued facts and functionality and had no time for emotions or the imaginative realm.
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Public Relations Review
Public relations and historical sociology: Historiography as reflexive critique Jacquie L’Etang Queen Margaret University, Scotland
a r t i c l e
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Article history: Received 6 September 2013 Received in revised form 2 December 2013 Accepted 29 December 2013 Keywords: History Historiography Historical sociology Models
a b s t r a c t The essay focuses on thinking about thinking about PR history. The space between history and sociology encompasses theoretical and conceptual frames and can be drawn upon to consider PR in time, across times and between times. It reflects upon the purposes and practices of historical sociology and foregrounds themes relevant to public relations, its histories and methodological approaches. The paper, which is methodological at the strategic rather than the technical level, argues that public relations historians can usefully engage with theoretical issues and problems delineated in historical sociology and historical theory. Evolutionary, functionalist and typological approaches and the cultural logics of historical periodization are discussed and contextualized. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction This article aims to problematize the strategic choices and processes of historical work and historical theorizing in relation to public relations. The form of problematization is derived from the ‘interfacial political theory/cultural studies [that] involves critical reading and theoretical interrogation of [accepted] practices’ (Dean, 2008: 755). The essay is located within the humanities tradition (drawing on historical theory, and historical sociological sources, and political science) to explore and discuss ideas, and builds on similar work that has engaged discursively with paradigmatic issues in history such as Brown (2006), Vos (2011), Bentele (1997, 2004, 2013), L’Etang (1995, 2004, 2008a, 2008b, 2010). The aim is neither a critique nor a catalogue of existing histories, nor does it seek to build a particular theoretical or global approach to PR history. Instead, the intention is to focus on strategic level methodological choices that be realized by reflection on historical sociology and historical theory. Historical sociology is a useful source from which to develop PR historical projects beyond narrative and presents opportunities for theoretically diverse critical insights, alternative conceptualizations and constructs of public relations, its histories and its historical thinkers. Such self-reflection is not indulgent, but an important aspect of historical writing. Because history writing entails not only interpretation and description but also explanation, it is reflexivity (Brincker & Gundelach, 2005; Holland, 1999), that becomes essential ‘in the moment’ of literary creation as the habitus (Bourdieu, 1984) and ‘thought styles’ (Fleck, 1979/1935) of public relations scholars (many of whom have worked in public relations practice) influence their approaches and theoretical dispositions. Analysis of the logics of historical explanation in public relations demonstrated the dominance of societal and actor-centred functionalist explanations that legitimated the practice uncritically in tandem with progressivist and evolutionary influences (Vos, 2011). Since public relations inhabits dialectical societal spaces and is concerned with change agents and change processes, PR histories necessarily raise questions that demand interrogation from social theory and political science and engagement
E-mail address: [email protected] 0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.12.009
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with paradigmatic influences from these broader fields. This ambitious scope can be more readily realized when refracted through the lens of historical sociology to reference structural/processual dynamics and social theory. Since a number of social theorists have explored evolutionary change, and public relations activities typically emerge at points of emerging change, transformations and contestation, the intersection of history and sociology provides a space to explore public relations as an historical and sociological phenomenon in multiple political and cultural contexts, for example: nationalism, national identity, nation branding and public diplomacy; institutionalization; professionalization in ‘professional society’ (Perkin, 1989); social movements and activism. The argument presented here is that the emerging genre of public relations history and historiography can usefully engage with historical sociology, historical theory, social and political theory to generate more reflexive insights to contextualize PR histories, PR history writing, the PR academic discipline, and PR in socio-cultural contexts. 2. History and theory History deals with non-existing past realities and anonymities (Partner, 2013: 2; van der Dussen, 2013: 45) and the challenges of history-writing cannot be under-estimated (L’Etang, 1995, 2004, 2008a, 2008b). The definition of a field of inquiry or a historical subject, topic or theme is underpinned by epistemological and ontological assumptions and, as in all humanistic research, the subject position of the author. The motivation for historical research is important, for example whether authors are ‘achieved’ or ‘ascribed’ insiders or outsiders taking a particular political, intellectual or moral stance (Smith, 1991: 156–168). For example, in public relations the fact that a public relations historian does or does not have professional experience in public relations (and whether that is in consultancy or in-house) matters because it raises challenges with regard to detachment and involvement. The values and assumptions of PR history writers are significant and need acknowledgement (as was the case in Olasky’s classic pro-business PR history (Olasky, 1987), likewise inherited disciplinary, occupational and socio-cultural conscious and unconscious burdens of the past for example, functionalism, propaganda, US Progressivism, colonialism). Historical scholarship is subject to ideological and political influences and as with all literary and linguistic communication is necessarily interpretive. Pre-suppositional choices that underpin historical scholarship are central to the interpretation of historical sources and texts. History is important to the politics of the PR discipline so the articulation of historical and sociological paradigms and themes in relation to those in the public relations discipline is significant. As a reflexive practice, public relations history demands not only self-awareness with regard to historiographical debates and issues. History has been ‘traditionally located within the humanities for a reason’, and PR history writing demands historical consciousness but also historical imagination (van der Dussen, 2013) and sensitivity to the notion of historicity – reflections and actions informed by history. Historical consciousness and imagination are concepts that brought into play both the experiential and the universal features of history as a necessary aspect of constructed realities (Collingwood, 1974). Societal structures and politics shape national, cultural and institutional contexts and within them, power relations, dominance and hegemonic tendencies. Paradigms such as historical realism, structuralism, structuralist Marxism, deconstruction and modernization theses provide contexts for understanding power dynamics such as interlocking forces (Althusser, 1971) that constrain or facilitate occupational, professional and practitioner agency and communication power (Castells, 2009). Ideological componentry and assumptions are not only relevant in terms of the relationships for example between PR capitalism, democracy, commodification, but in terms of the historical use of such categories; their consequential ideological or rhetorical deployment vis a vis PR; and their overall explanatory value. Dialectical relations between past and present throw up discontinuities, genealogical similarities and challenge notions of historical objectivity. In drawing together these insights, one can appreciate that history operates as discursive patterns of values, narrative, social theory and explanation (Hall, 1992). It also operates as an heuristic device that allows categorization the deployment of which generates insights about ongoing and changing cultural and creative practices (Rigney, 2013: 184) bearing in mind, on a cultural account, PR’s role as cultural service provider. History thinking and writing is interpretive and rhetorical, an argumentative process, not a catalogue. Archives may be sources, but without broader level theoretical interpretation they are simply partial fragments of past human activities. 3. Theorizing history in societal contexts: framing PR historical research The relationship between theory and history frames historiographical reflection and analysis. Philosophy of history has tended to assume rather than interrogate history in the exploration of ideas such as historical cycles, spirals, dialectical encounters, upheavals, or what counts as true information about past reality (Partner, 2013: 2). Historiography is paradigmatic, for example nationalist, statist, institutional, progressive, subaltern, and postcolonial. Historiography itself is a product of the professionalization of memory, collective and societal memories and archives and memorialization that is engaged in agentic legitimacy and identity projects as opposed to the history of everyday life (Giesen & Junge, 2003: 332). Historical theory is not a ‘theory of history’ or unified system but, ‘A coherent yet flexible framework which supports analyses of historical knowledge, and assists our understanding of what kind of knowledge we can have of the past, and precisely how that knowledge is constructed, assembled and presented. In this sense of a framework of conceptual instruments for examining our knowledge of the past, theory Please cite this article in press as: L’Etang, J. Public relations and historical sociology: Historiography as reflexive critique. Public Relations Review (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.12.009
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is metahistorical: it does its work as an adjunct operation opening out the reach of critical awareness we bring to our assumptions and practice as historians. . .Historical theory does not mean. . .explaining or predicting the course of world events in the manner of older styles of philosophy of history. . .The purpose of theory directed to written history is the deep analysis of historical knowledge, for the sake of intellectual transparency and disciplinary self-regulation, and if theory is the category term collecting together the instruments of analysis, it requires a stable defined object on which to work. A theoretical scrutiny addresses the procedures and operations involved in the making of written history above the level of its constituent statement-facts and trains an intense light on the construction of chronology, causal trajections, selection and emphasis, value-laden language, and interpretation in the fullest sense’. (Partner, 2013: 1, 3) The concepts of sociological history and historical sociology have been deployed to understand the dynamics between society, culture, power, events, change and everyday life. The terms were distinguished to mark a difference in methodological emphasis and approach in terms of the dominant approach within the research strategy. In the same way that in a social science mixed-methods approach one set of epistemological and ontological assumptions will tend to drive the research and its analysis with the supplementary methods there for purposes of triangulation and complementary data, so the balance between history and social theory may vary in terms of direction, focus and style. Historical sociology uses historical data to support sociological interpretation and analysis, for example, seeing PR as part of social processes, structuration, discursive practices linked to historical developments and changes in those processes in ways that are contextual, interrogative and disruptive. Sociological history tackles broad social issues using sociological concepts such as class, gender, sexuality linked to historical narrative and explanation. Such approaches may throw up questions beyond history that are of central importance to understand contemporary practice. For example an historical materialist view focusing on labour and production might generate questions around the social relations of PR production – what is produced and by whom? What is the nature of labour power in public relations? What value is produced and by whom? How is capital deployed, invested and generated in these processes and who benefits economically and socially? Historical sociology is a theory-driven approach to history, using historical data for an explicitly sociological purpose, that, ‘uses social theory in a self-conscious way to outline general propositions about the nature of historical development’ (Kelley, 2013: 9), and, ‘Investigate[s] the mutual interpenetration of past and present, events and processes, acting and structuration. . .[marries] conceptual clarification, comparative generalization and empirical exploration’. (Smith, 1991: 3) It is an approach that considers events, contexts and concepts both of the period under review and the times within which the analysis is conducted, so it can be multi-layered and self-referential, for example, historical sociologists have analyzed the emergence of their own sub-discipline in terms of successive ‘waves’ (Carroll, 2009: 553–554). The approach has potential for public relations because it is politically and ideologically inflected in relation to public issues and change. It has focused on modernization theory, modern liberal thought, totalitarianism, transformations in modernity, and the emergence of public relations practice has often been linked to one or more of these societal phenomena (Delanty & Isin, 2003: 1–8). Modernization theory has been defined as ‘an offshoot of the dominant functionalist sociology of the 1950s’ comprised of a range of ideas suggesting that ‘there was one way to be modern and that developing societies could and should follow the examples of Western Europe and the United States to achieve this. . .’ (Calhoun, Rojek, & Turner, 2005: 4). Totalitarian domination, associated with propaganda has been identified as a facet of modernism (Bauman, 1991 in Calhoun et al., 2005: 5). Historicized critiques of public relations and its role in democratic practice, links to propaganda, and the spread of neoliberalism are already present in the literature (Dinan & Miller, 2007; Miller & Dinan, 2008). Given the agentic nature of public relations there is clearly scope for the historical analysis of PR’s role in the cultural workings of power contextualized with political theory and political science that, ‘addresses the historical and contemporary relations among subjects, rationalities and practices that go under the name of the political’ (Dean, 2008: 753) and central to histories of public affairs, lobbying, activism and their contribution to specification not only through the production of difference through discursive practices but through relational strategies and the accumulation of relational and other capitals that contribute to power differentials and deployment. Indeed, as communications historian Charles Tilly pointed out, ‘explanatory political science [within which political public relations, public affairs and lobbying may be legitimately situated] can hardly get anywhere without relying on careful historical analysis’ (Tilly, 2011: 521). Thus public relations histories that encompass these specialisms may also scaffold their historical analysis with political theory and political science. The implications for practising PR historians is that historical research requires preparatory mapping (literary and/or graphic) of relevant historical and sociological paradigms, linked, where appropriate to conceptual frames that are already present in the PR field to create theoretical layering that contextualizes research strategy and questions, empirical data and interpretive processes. For example, postcolonial and subaltern perspectives demonstrate very clearly that history is a genre within which multiple discourses are at play for example: dominance, domination, subordination, accommodation and resistance. Historical events include: conquest, legitimacy struggles, counter-hegemony, loss, apologia and redemption, themes that also inhabit PR organizational work (Dutta-Bergman, 2005; Munshi & Kurian, 2007). Postcolonial perspectives challenge official statist nationalism and acknowledge diasporic perspectives. For example, colonialism shaped international and inter-cultural public relations practices in the UK and its themes and assumptions are clearly present in the archive of
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the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (L’Etang, 2004). Yet relatively little penetrates mainstream PR literature about the role of PR in colonial history and de-colonization either within government circles, or within the colonies either in the UK or other former colonial powers (but see Smyth, 2001; L’Etang & Muruli, 2004). Contributions that encompass global perspectives also need to take account of varied, alternative and competing logics rather than imposing neo-liberal and developmental frameworks on culturally specific practices of societal communication and change. Global and historical perspectives are open to critique since these are largely written from a US or European perspective and may impose agendas. Indeed, one impact of subaltern studies is its very challenge to totalizing histories, specifically national histories. Guha argued that there were distinct differences in the histories of power in colonial India and Europe and thus separated the history of power in global modernity from a universal history of capital (Chakrabarty, 2003: 196). Subaltern theorists challenged European historiography (based on progressivist development from peasant to factory worker to self awareness and citizen or revolutionary action) because Indian subalterns were activists during and after colonialism. Postcolonial theories influence the way in which public relations histories link to public communication and public diplomacy perspectives and have conceptual and practical implications for the structuring and methods of projects, especially where there may be an implicit over-dependence on official and statist archives and stories.
4. Historiographical issues in PR Historiographical issues that have arisen to date in PR relate to: definitions and scope of the field; the use of typologies as explanation; periodization. Debates have focused on the relationship between PR and public communication; the inclusion or exclusion of propaganda; the questionable dominance of a culturally specific explanatory framework based on specialist functions/paradigmatic features of PR work; tendencies to evolutionary progressivism (L’Etang, 1995, 2004, 2008a, 2008b). These discussions are complicated by the fact that some concepts simultaneously function historically, but also as conceptual frameworks, for example, propaganda may be located in particular eras or as state, activist or corporate practices, or positioned morally as a binary opposite to PR practice, or conceptualized as a particular media communication conceptual and graphic model. Likewise rhetoric, which retains a connection to PR through discursive practices may also be interpreted as part of the historical origins but also as the history of moral critique of persuasive communication – so rhetoric can be re-constructed as a contemporary realization of a social role – as well as being a major paradigm within the discipline and part of its structural and political dynamics (L’Etang, 1996). Delineating the terminology is dependent on historians’ individual paradigmatic positioning – functionalist, interpretive, radical humanism/critical – as well as within the common approaches within the PR discipline that could currently be sketched as: excellence/strategic management, rhetoric/discourse, communitarian/civil society, socio-cultural, critical, gender/LGBT, postcolonial/subaltern, and race. Public relations history can be defined in a narrow way to the first or early usages of the Anglo-Saxon term or equivalents in other languages (in itself a discursive move that privileges Anglo-Saxon cultures and definitions) relating to a recognized occupation similar to that which operates today. It is this sort of narrow definition that largely that shapes occupational/’professional’ histories. As a number of public relations historians have acknowledged there appears to be some ‘pre-history’ of comparable activities including propaganda, often involving the same people (L’Etang, 2004). A broader approach permits the inclusion of a wider range of historical activities (publicity, government information, and propaganda) within the scope of PR history. This fundamental issue over definitions and scope is part of the long-running debate over public relations/communication management/strategic communications/corporate communications definitions and nomenclature, and the rationale for these distinctions are themselves a worthy object of detailed historical inquiry. Bentele (2013) argued that there were two main types of historiography in public relations ‘fact or event-based [or] model and theory-based’ (Bentele, 2013: 246), commenting, ‘It is clear that a PR historiography which has models of this type [‘the’ four models] is much more grounded in theory than the simpler type of fact-based PR. . .not only the description. . .but rather. . .the explanation’. (Bentele, 2013: 248–249) Bentele’s analysis of public relations histories contrasts what he classifies as factual accumulation, systematization and cataloguing of ‘facts’ that lacks ‘any type of theoretical grounding’ (Bentele, 2013: 248). However, this is not strictly correct. The collection of data will indeed have been influenced by the researchers’ paradigmatic world views, epistemological and ontological frameworks, it is simply that these have not necessarily been laid bare. In short, some PR history is empiricist. Bentele’s reference to ‘fact-based PR’ assumes that ‘facts’ are unproblematic and also downplays the role of interpretation and argument. Not every historical analysis may be on the grand scale (longue durée) but that does not mean to say that fine detail is not open to a range of theoretical interpretations, for example, sociology of work and professions, notions of ideology, or harnessing feminism or queer theory. Furthermore, even so-called ‘fact-based’ PR histories will be based on underlying assumptions and theoretical frameworks that influence the writing. A central purpose of this article has been to highlight the importance of reflexivity and transparency in PR history writing. Bentele’s solution is to argue for modelbased approaches to historiography (giving the example of ‘the four models’) because he believes they are theory-based and therefore offer more historical explanation. However, framework or ‘model’ approaches tend to be focused on linear explanation and functionality rather than, for example, the histories of interstices of power and influence in relation to PR activities. Please cite this article in press as: L’Etang, J. Public relations and historical sociology: Historiography as reflexive critique. Public Relations Review (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.12.009
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Another issue relates to the nature and extent of ‘theory’. In the case of ‘the four models’ the theory was a normative typology derived from US historical and cultural context. Bentele refers to Grunig’s unpublished manuscript revising his seminal 1984 text (co-authored with Hunt) that was evidently sent to a number of scholars (myself included) in the mid1990s. In this Grunig presented the model as a history of ideas about public relations. Perhaps these revisions were the consequence of a reading and re-reading of US literature on PR historiography (Pearson, 1992; Olasky, 1987) and earlier efforts to understand the role of public relations in US society (Pimlott, 1952); but also maybe by his European excursions where a number of scholars were presenting alternative approaches to PR history (Ronneberger & Rühl, 1992; L’Etang, 1995; Bentele, 1997). It is useful to position Bentele’s approach to historiography in relation to its antecedents, influences and paradigmatic history, not to mention its likely ongoing influence in the field of public relations. There appears to be a traceable link to positivism via Comte. Comte’s ideas in relation to historical analysis were a variant of his comparative method that had a biological view of societal structure and dynamics (Turner, 2001: 33). This idea appears in Bentele’s functional-integrative stratification approach based on evolutionary biology and developmental psychology (Bentele, 2013: 251). Comte’s approach to history examined the movement of ideas and structures with a view to formulating these into laws of human organization (Turner, 2001: 34). Not dissimilarly, Bentele’s stratification model seeks principles of the social evolution of communication, communication systems and social systems (Luhmann, 1995) that can then be aligned to periodization models (Bentele, 2013: 256). Vos also noted in his analysis of historical logics in public relations, ‘The logic of functional explanation. . .is borrowed from biology’ (Vos, 2011: 122). Bentele’s model may be a structuring structure (Bourdieu, 1984) whose classification processes may appear objective but bolster functionalism as a disposition within the field of public relations historical scholarship, its habitus and spaces. Public relations historiography has already been strongly influenced by the US-based typology of ‘the four models’ of practice that transmogrified into a progressivist historical explanatory framework (L’Etang, 1995, 2004, 2008a, 2008b; Bentele, 2010), but caution is needed with typological approaches because they do not always reveal their fundamental underpinnings, as Bourdieu cautioned in relation to claims made about scientific classifications (of populations). ‘The observer. . .has no chance of bringing to the level of consciousness the true status of his classifying operations which, like native knowledge, presuppose connections and comparisons and which, even when they seem to belong to the realm of social physics, in fact produce and interpret signifying distinctions, in short belong to the realm of the symbolic’. (Bourdieu, 1984: 172) Historical sociologists ‘concur that evolutionary theories build too much presumption of “progress” and necessity into patterns of historical change that bring evil as well as good and reveal the results of purposive human action even if the results are not always what actors intend’ (Calhoun et al., 2005: 3). The problematics of colligation (which also include arbitrariness, politics, rhetorical) alluded to above in terms of its crude application to public relations definitions (a typology) and as a single explanation of developments in PR US history that has dominated both conceptual and historical developments world-wide and strongly influenced by progressivism, instrumentalism and evolutionist remain today. At least initially, colligation in PR lacked self-analysis and reflexiveness with regard to the motivation behind colligatory efforts for example nostalgia, dominance, romance, as Toohey remarked, ‘Periodization is seductive. At its simplest it comforts. Regularizing, packaging and calibrating the apparent disorder of the historical record, positing chronological or intellectual blocks, it creates a type of order. . .simplifies memorization. . .assists instruction. . .romantic. . .profoundly deceptive. . .’. (Toohey, 2003: 209) It seems that morality tales are a feature of public relations’ self-mythologizing and discourse, part of its long-standing legitimacy struggles. To be sure, historians should be sensitive to their rhetorical role. One important development within historical sociology and historical theory has been the emergence of memory studies, a perspective that adds a different dimension to the dualism between those who hold to the narrow definitions of PR history and those who are more inclusive in their definition. Memory studies emerged in the 1980s and is particularly relevant to history that draws on oral sources (informants) for testimony that chronicles events and personal experiences for documentary purposes (Giesen & Junge, 2003; Hutton, 2013). The role of collective memory is central to the understanding of tradition, culture, nation-building and nationalism. Memory studies also encompasses psycho-history, psychoanalysis and collective memories, approaches that are not only relevant to the interpretation of events and for, example the trauma and empathy relevant to risk and crisis, or particular cases, but to the understanding of occupational and institutional memories that contribute to occupational/professional mythologies. At a societal level memory studies also offers perspectives on the politics of commemoration and heritage that directly links to the history of public relations constructed more broadly as public communication. There is also a link to the use of psychoanalytic approaches within public relations or the application of psychoanalytic concepts to understand public relations (Fawkes, 2012). The pre-modern period itself should not be excluded as a focus of exploration, particularly given that this era is already present within the public relations historical canon. Ruling out the pre-modern and the ancients as does Bentele in his functional-integrative stratification model (2013) to focus on PR as a social system and PR as an occupational field and profession closes down imaginative understandings of PR type activities and ideas from a humanities perspective. Public relations may be seen as connected with much earlier cultural beliefs and practices outside the scientific and the rational. The scientization of public relations mitigates against the exploration of its mythical and spiritual practices; its meaning-making in organizational cults, and its apparently interstitial position Please cite this article in press as: L’Etang, J. Public relations and historical sociology: Historiography as reflexive critique. Public Relations Review (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.12.009
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between beliefs, values and cultural mythologies. Therefore, within PR historiography, modernization, progressivism and scientization theses have to be perceived and understood as value choices that endeavour to shape understandings of PR history and historical work in the field. 5. Reflections Public relations historical work is the process of thinking and writing about the history of meaning generation and the circulation of discourses, ideas and networks linked to agency, structures, power, hegemony, ideology and communicative action. Public relations history-making and thinking is located at the interstices of history, philosophy and social science and is a literary creation exploring complex configurations that can generate critical perspectives of public relations history, open to reinterpretations and re-representation. Public relations histories can usefully go beyond causality and the linkage of events to engage with the broader landscape of historical sociology in order to contextualize empirical findings and contribute towards a re-evaluation of PR and the academic discipline in society and the thinking processes employed in the conceptualization around these, indeed, ‘If we are to tackle. . .history in the field of public relations then we do have to deal with questions of power, structure, social theory and relationships in society and put some work into theorizing their significance for concepts we use. For example, we need to explore the history of the evolution of concepts of “activist groups’ which so clearly articulate the relationship between applied public relations researchers . . .and researched (“activist group”) as one of “Self and Other”. The concept of “Other” has been debated on ethnographic research and raises a fundamental problem. . .How can we avoid the subjugation of publics to organizations? We need to de-centre public relations history and discourse. We also need the history of the context of concept evolution in order to relate specific developments in public relations to political and social events and theory. For example, the perceptions of public relations activities directed at activist groups. . .there is a role for phenomenological research. . .there is work to be done in making connections between public relations concepts and theory to ideologies of liberalism, capitalism, socialism and managerialism. . .[furthermore] a more anthropological approach to public relations history could liberate different cultural approaches to public relations’. (L’Etang, 1995: 27) This article has argued that it is important to incorporate the socio-cultural and political contexts into PR history writing and to acknowledge ideological, ontological and epistemological assumptions that have shaped the researcher’s approach to the topic. Thus PR histories should be theorized at multiple levels not in terms of the ‘object’ of such work, but in terms of a broader politics and societal dynamics as well as ‘between the hyphens’ relating past to present and imagined futures and making transparent any normative ideals. The article has again challenged simplistic colligation as well as detailed description of Gradgrind1 -ish ‘facts’ at the expense of context. 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1 Mr. Gradgrind was a character in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times who may be interpreted as representing the zeitgeist of industrial capitalism. He valued facts and functionality and had no time for emotions or the imaginative realm.
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