The SAGE Handbook of Public Relations

Citation

L'Etang, J. (2011), "The SAGE Handbook of Public Relations", Journal of Communication Management, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 179-182. https://doi.org/10.1108/13632541111126382

This book is an essential companion for all those teaching public relations, and an invaluable resource for those researching theses and dissertations. This volume is the second edition and a very welcome addition to the Sage Handbook stable. For those unfamiliar with the Sage Handbooks, it is worth explaining their value in presenting a reflexive overview of a field and its ongoing struggles and debates. Such volumes serve as a focus for ongoing discussions and arguments about subject scope, boundaries and agendas, and are indicative of political and ideological values and differences. To a large extent, too, they operate as a form of public identity within wider scholarship. Indeed, Heath's first edition was a notable step in terms of the development of the public relations discipline. There are many volumes in the Sage Handbook series of considerable use to public relations specialists, for example, Public opinion research, Organization studies, Qualitative research, Organizational communication, but of course this specialist volume on public relations is necessarily of primary interest.

Comparisons between the first volume, published in 2001, and the new volume are inevitable, and the Editor reflects upon shifts in the academic landscape, noting the increasing emphasis on societal contexts and critical perspectives, which, taken together suggest a more diverse and dynamic field than was the case a decade ago. Notable too, is the inevitable generational shift and the inclusion of a few more contributions from outside the USA (although these still remain very much in the minority). Clearly, in this overview, it is not possible to comment on all the 49 chapters, but I endeavour to give a flavour of the scope of the book, as well as suggesting some areas for further development.

The book's chapters are split between three major sections: “Mind, self and society”: “The practice of public relations” and “Public relations and globalicity”. The first section – “Mind, self and society” – explore a range of perspectives on meaning‐creation and the contextualization of public relations scholarship in relation to public relations identities and practices in political and socio‐economic cultural environments. Thus the book opens with a contribution that explores public relations as work that contributes to civil society (Taylor), an approach that has been critiqued for its inherent imperialism (Dutta‐Bergman, 2005), to which the author responds with a defence based on the free‐market – “we view civil society as the creation of discourse in the market‐place of ideas” (Taylor, 2010, p. 13). In reflecting a range of approaches to the constructions of public relations meanings and identities in societal contexts, The Sage Handbook on Public Relations brings together updated conceptions of the dominant paradigm (Pang et al., 2010; Kim and Ni), symbolically placed in chapters 2 and 3 before a range of alternative conceptions are offered, for example rhetoric (Ihlen, 2010), complexity theory (Gilpin and Murphy, 2010), systems/societal approach (Bentele, 2010). Critical work is much more apparent in this new edition, and its implicit opposition to the dominant paradigm is most obvious in Rob Brown's chapter, “Symmetry and its critics: antecedents, prospects, and implications for symmetry in a postsymmetry era” (Brown, 2010). Likewise, in Leitch and Motion's updating of Leitch and Neilson (2001) the authors are explicit in their claim that:

We are not dealing with a symmetrical communicative practice. Rather, a key aim of public relations is to achieve or resist change by persuasively advancing and potentially privileging particular meanings and actions (Leitch and Motion, 2010, p. 103).

Leitch and Motion's utilization of discourse theory highlights the importance of power relations, and the subject of power is developed further by the same authors in conjunction with the Editor (Heath et al., 2010) and by others who seek to unpack the term “power” and consider its relationship to public relations (Smudde and Courtwright, 2010). Arising out of conceptual analyses of power are specific issues such as race and diversity, a topic rising up the agenda, as made apparent by contributions from, respectively, Edwards (2010) and Waymer (2010). Edwards draws on Bourdieu and her historical review of whiteness and “Othering” raises questions about the discourses of raced movements being interpreted and constructed variously as either public relations or “activism”. Waymer's reflexive account also opens up new research vistas in his consideration of the implications of a focus on race for public relations via the topics of risk, issues and crisis management and CSR. A review of the well‐established feminist research is provided by Wrigley (2010), although this does tend to illustrate by way of absence the lack of engagement with the male experience to date. Feminist research could also usefully explore the experiences of women and men in public relations scholarship and university teaching in relation to the nature of their labour and reward systems. Feminist scholarship in public relations could engage more fully with methodological implications of feminist ideology and ethics with regard to choice of research paradigm; it is curious that much gender research in public relations has been quantitative, rather than qualitative. Taken together, these chapters open the way to the consideration of other issues and theories that have not been aired in public relations literature such as sexual relations and power in PR work, sexuality, queer theory, LGTG perspectives and discourses. Such issues are clearly fundamental to identities and communication – central concerns of public relations as Vardeman et al. (2010, pp. 223‐4) point out in their essay developing “an intersectionality theory of public relations” in which they explore identities in the context of power and power relations:

Identities like race, gender, class and sexuality/sexual orientation can act together, simultaneously, to place groups in distinct situations of power. How power is distributed unequally based on multiple, overlapping identities is called of intersectionality […] Intersectionality examines how some individuals and communities exist at the convergence where oppressions take on a cascading, multiplying effect […] interlocking […] thereby creating a web of inequality.

A number of chapters focus on change (Brønn, 2010), activism (Smith and Ferguson, 2010; Bourland‐Davis et al., 2010), issue management (Jaques, 2010), crisis (Coombs, 2010) and risk (Palenchar, 2010; McComas). Other chapters raise topics that are more unusual in public relations literature, such as health (Springston and Weaver Lariscy, 2010), investor relations (Laskin, 2010), the military (Toledano, 2010) and the topic of sport is again highlighted as an under‐researched area that has potential to pursue analyses of power (Isaacson, 2010). (In the first edition there was a plea “for helping an unknown field” (Neupauer, 2001)).

The final section of the handbook focuses on concepts and practice of global public relations in the context of overlapping and shifting identities, multiple diaspora, assimilation and resistance to nation‐framed cultures (Wakefield). Contributions reflect upon the implications of practice in terms of cultural competences and an anthropological sensitivity to indigenous cultures that can lead to a productive role in relationships between different identities and affiliations, particularly in areas where there are “traditional antagonisms” (Vujinovic and Kruckeberg, 2010 cited in Laskin, 2010). Curiously, however, the discussions of culture, one of which makes specific reference to cultural and public diplomacy (Sriramesh, 2010 cited in Laskin, 2010), do not refer to the subject of religion – in fact “religion” is not even included in the book's index – surprising given its relevance for identities, communication and current geopolitics.

The magnum opus of a Sage Handbook is of such significance that it seems carping to articulate criticism. Nevertheless, in reading such a very wide range of contributions I thought that the book would have benefited from fuller introductions and commentary on the different chapters and the way in which their themes linked, not least because it would be immensely helpful for undergraduate and postgraduate students encountering such a vast volume for the first time. In the earlier volume (Heath, 2001) the device of a commentator was employed to good effect (Cheney and Christensen, 2001). The latest volume concludes with editorial reflections and a commentary by Elizabeth Toth “one of the stalwarts of the field” (Heath, 2010, p. 709) in which she too acknowledges growing diversity in the research agenda in her presentation of five key paradigms: crisis communication, critical theory, feminist, rhetorical, strategic management and tactical. Along with other authors, Toth reiterates challenges raised by Heath that relate to the identity and status of public relations researchers and, interestingly appears to express some ambivalence about the increasing numbers of public relations academics who “forgo the public relations practice experience that [US] universities required in the past” (Toth, 2010, p. 720).

Finally, as a critical scholar, I was sensitive to a degree of idealism in some contributions regarding the role and potential role of public relations, and found it extraordinary that there were only two indexed references to the term “propaganda”. From my perspective, that almost‐absence reveals something interesting about public relations scholars” identity work and, possibly, impression management strategies.