Abstract
The introduction and eight essays in Public Relations, Society and Culture (edited by Edwards and Hodges) seek to push the focus of and approach to public relations research and theorizing towards a new direction, a socio-cultural perspective. Lee Edwards and Caroline Hodges argue in the introduction to the volume that recent scholarly work in public relations “constitutes a ‘turn’ in public relations theory that shifts the ontological and epistemological focus of the field towards the socially constructed nature of practice, process and outcomes” (p. 3). This book furthers this turn, steadily engaging in both subtle and overt criticism of what Edwards and Hodges call the dominant “Grunigian approach”, and offers a review of the critical, cultural and political economy-centred public relations literature.
The book seems to read as a methodological manifesto in which the authors argue for the use of previously overlooked (primarily qualitative) techniques in order to develop a more complete understanding of the working lives of PR practitioners and the culture that PR practitioners help produce. For example, the book’s third chapter, on storytelling, by Paul Elmer of Leeds Metropolitan University, contains a challenge to PR scholars and compares the work of three narrative scholars, Yiannis Gabriel, David Boje and Barbara Czarniawska. The chapter ends with an observation that researchers who are new to the field become bogged down in complex narrative projects. With so few resources to assist scholars in creative, data-rich qualitative scholarship, projects and theorizing in public relations languishes, Elmer notes. Looking beyond narrative studies, Elmer argues that a “greater variety of analytical approaches would signal that public relations scholarship was reaching a more mature stage” (p. 58). Sentence by sentence and chapter by chapter, the text furthers this notion.
The book’s fourth chapter is written by Edwards and contains a perspective on public relations in society influenced by Pierre Bourdieu. A passage from the chapter’s first page warrants an extended citation as it encapsulates a major theme of the book:
This book illustrates how the effects of public relations work are felt deep within the fabric of society and affect our habitus … [t]he starting point for this argument is that public relations is not a free-floating, neutral occupation, isolated from its social context. (p. 61)
Other chapters which help advance this context-minded research approach are those by Hodges, in which she reviews her ethnography of PR practice in Mexico City, Hodges and Nilam McGrath, in which they further consider PR work in Latin America, and Kristin Demetrious, in which she focuses on social media. These constitute a systematic call for a broader conceptualization of public relations work that has not often appeared in the literature.
A chief limitation of the book is its brevity. At only 137 pages in the paperback version, it leaves readers wanting more insight. A description of the book on the back cover suggests that it brings together a wide range of alternative theoretical and methodological approaches. Indeed, several new perspectives are offered and the chapters are well-written and well-researched.
However, readers might have benefited from additional chapters on the history of PR teaching and research, quantitative research and theorizing that has fallen outside of the Grunigian approach, and perhaps even a broader socio-cultural critique of other forms of message promotion such as marketing. Edwards’ chapter on Bourdieu addresses the latter issue, but more could have been done to establish the historical and academic contexts for this book. In addition to these topics, a deep and earnest discussion of journalism (perhaps through the lens of political economy) would have helped present a more thorough theoretical framework. While scholars often draw barriers between public relations and marketing, and between public relations and journalism, these topics are often intertwined in the professional literature and in the public’s perception of communications; more information on these relationships would have been appropriate.
In summary, Public Relations, Society and Culture is an informative and highly engaging book. Scholars with a background in excellence theory should read this text to understand the critiques made against the functional theoretical approach so that they can better design studies to capture the socio-cultural context of PR work. In many ways, this is a wake-up call for the discipline. Critical-cultural scholars will appreciate the extension of Bourdieu’s concept of cultural intermediaries into a new area of communications. This book is a good starting point for a new conversation about public relations, regardless of the scholars’ particular theoretical orientation or how long they have been in the field.