Pathways to Public Relations provides a synthesis of a complicated arena that no other edited volume has attempted. With its wide range of historical perspectives and multiple levels of analysis that fully contextualizes public relations, this book showcases a range of cultural and contextual aspects from a diverse range of historians active within the public relations field.
Over the centuries, scholars have studied how individuals, institutions and groups have used various rhetorical stances to persuade others to pay attention to, believe in, and adopt a course of action. The emergence of public relations as an identifiable and discrete occupation in the early 20th century led scholars to describe this new iteration of persuasion as a unique, more systematized, and technical form of wielding influence, resulting in an overemphasis on practice, frequently couched within an American historical context.
This volume responds to such approaches by expanding the framework for understanding public relations history, investigating broad, conceptual questions concerning the ways in which public relations rose as a practice and a field within different cultures and countries at different times in history.
With its unique cultural and contextual emphasis, Pathways to Public Relations shifts the paradigm of public relations history away from traditional methodologies and assumptions, and provides a new and unique entry point into this complicated arena.
Pathways to Public Relations: Histories of Practice and Profession sets its scope broadly to examine what its authors document as the historic presence of public relations. It goes beyond the notion that one model defines the practice or that research should be limited only to practices that are defined specifically as public relations. Readers are left to decide those matters for themselves, given the abundant documentation and definition that the authors bring to bear on the matter. Pathways, in that regard, gives insights into a discourse practice that seems inherent in the human condition.
Robert L.Heath, University of Houston, USA
What more needs to be said about public relations? Well plenty, if you want to understand how it critically influences society. Pathways to Public Relations is an edited volume that is rich with fascinating new viewpoints and historical research. By revealing PR's often hidden and complex relationships with religion, civil society, government and corporations - and its own professional project - this book provides compelling evidence that PR's socio-cultural significance is 'only just beginning to surface'.
Kristin Demetrious, Deakin University, Australia
Pathways to Public Relations rips up the standard historical narrative of public relations and rids it of a narrow focus on corporations, professionalism and biographies of father figures. The result is a wildly diverse and fascinatingly rich volume.
Øyvind Ihlen, University of Oslo, Norway
Pathways to Public Relations: Histories of practice and profession' builds on the success of the International History of Public Relations Conference and offers a broad range of recent scholarship from around the world. It is a very welcome scholarly addition to the expanding field of public relations history.
Tom Watson, Bournemouth University, UK
