Pathways to Public Relations: Histories of Practice and Profession

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.

Table of Contents

Part I Public relations history and faith
Chapter 1 The strategic heart: the nearly mutual embrace of religion and public relations
Chapter 2 State and church as public relations history in Ireland, 1922–2011
Chapter 3 The public relations and artful devotion of Hildegard Von Bingen
Chapter 4 An alternative view of social responsibility: the ancient and global footprint of caritas and public relations

Part II Public relations history and politics/government
Chapter 5 The coercion of consent: the manipulative potential of FBI public relations during the J. Edgar Hoover era
Chapter 6 Forgotten roots of international public relations: attempts of Germany, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to influence the United States during World War I
Chapter 7 Government is different: a history of public relations in American public administration
Chapter 8 Building certainty in uncertain times: the construction of communication by early medieval polities
Chapter 9 I, Claudius the Idiot: lessons to be learned from reputation management in Ancient Rome
Chapter 10 The utilization of public relations to avoid imperialism during the beginning of Thailand’s transition to modernization (1851–68)

Part III Public relations history and reform
Chapter 11 Between international and domestic public relations: cultural diplomacy and race in the 1949 ATMA “Round-the-World Tour”
Chapter 12 Shell Oil as a window into the development of public relations in Nigeria: from information management to social accountability
Chapter 13 The intersection of public relations and activism: a multinational look at suffrage movements
Chapter 14 Ubuntu, professionalism, activism, and the rise of public relations in Uganda
Chapter 15 Sarah Josepha Hale, editor/advocate

Part IV Public relations history and the profession
Chapter 16 The historical development of public relations in Turkey: the rise of a profession in times of social transformation
Chapter 17 An agent of change: public relations in early twentieth-century Australia
Chapter 18 The “new technique”: public relations, propaganda, and the American public, 1920–25
Chapter 19 Arthur Page and the professionalization of public relations
Chapter 20 The good reason of public relations: PR News and the selling of a field
Chapter 21 Defining public in public relations: how the 1920s debate over public opinion influenced early philosophies of public relations