Public Relations As Activism

Postmodern Approaches to Theory & Practice

Derina R. Holtzhausen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415743815
• eBook ISBN: 9781136740749
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This volume applies postmodern theory to public relations, providing an alternative lens to public relations theory and practice and developing public relations theory within the context of postmodernism. Author Derina R. Holtzhausen focuses on two key issues and their application to public relations theory and practice: the postmodernization of society, and the possibilities postmodern theories offer to explain and understand public relations practice in today's changing society. Holtzhausen's argument is that existing theory should be evaluated from a postmodern perspective to determine its applicability to postmodernity. Utilizing practitioner perspectives throughout the volume, she explores the practice of public relations as a form of activism.

The volume is intended for scholars and students in public relations. It may be used as a supplemental text in advanced courses on public relations theory, PR management, organizational communication, and related areas.

1

POSTMODERNITY,
POSTMODERNISM, AND
PUBLIC RELATIONS

[I]t is not really a matter of arriving at the truth of the content of the theses of the book, but rather a question of coming to grips with the new effects produced by the new situation of a joint discussion … it will be rather an attempt to produce a new book. The effects that have been produced upon us will be constitutive elements of the new book (the book of our conversations), and the latter will not be the clarification, the correct version, of the previous ones, but one of their effects upon two addressees, you and me, who are in no way privileged.

(Lyotard, in Lyotard and Thébaud, 1985)

The aim of this book, among others, is to provide a different lens to look at the impact of public relations theory and practice on society and is a continuation of the project I started in my dissertation and in subsequent publications (Holtzhausen, 1995, 2000, 2002, 2002a, 2002b; Holtzhausen & Voto, 2002). I hope that this book will contribute to a discussion, to producing a “new book,” as Lyotard (Lyotard & Thébaud, 1985) suggests, on the nature of public relations in the Western world and the possibilities of practice to bring about a more just and egalitarian society. That is the first aim of this book. The aim is not to provide a direct critique of specific public relations theories, although I do occasionally use some theories to show how the underlying worldview and philosophical assumptions lead to theory building and related practice. This is a second aim of this book: to show that no public relations theory or practice is neutral or objective but, particularly in the social and human sciences, deeply influenced by the cultures and societies in which they are formulated. In turn these theories and practices contribute to shaping those societies and cultures.

As such this text might very well raise more questions than answers. It investigates the possibilities of postmodern theory for public relations theory and practice in more depth than any of my previous work. I believe that many postmodern perspectives already have become a natural part of the discourse in our societies. The genie is out of the bottle and because so many people found their voices through postmodern perspectives, the postmodern genie will not go back. As Ermarth (2001b) says,

Once across the threshold of postmodernity—and most of us already have crossed it here and there whether we like it or not—history in its traditional sense, along with its founding unitary subject, [is] no longer possible simply because the postmodern world is not one system but many.

(pp. 207–208)

In the United States the fact that Barack Obama was elected president indicated that some of the old barriers of race and class are breaking down and that there is a much bigger appreciation of diversity in society. Other phenomena of postmodernity are the fragmentation of media and their audiences, facilitated by new technologies; an increased understanding of the complexities of the postmodern world; and more general acceptance of the reality that life and society are not neatly ordered but quite chaotic. At the same time this event has threatened many whose hegemony and norms have never been challenged in such a fundamental way and who do believe the world works in one way only.

This relates to two issues the book will focus on in terms of their application to public relations theory and practice: the postmodernization of society and the possibilities postmodern theories offer to explain, understand, and deal with a changing society. This does not per definition mean that existing public relations theories are redundant. However, it is important to understand that theories are created by people who themselves have specific understandings. Theories are not objective and all-knowing but rather represent one way of looking and explaining. Theories are the products of specific contexts. If contexts change, so do theories. In public relations there still is a dominant modernist and positivist approach to theory building. Much of practice is situated in the context of market economic principles of organizing and in finding linear causal relationships between distinct variables. In a recent bibliographic analysis of public relations theory Pasadeos, Berger, and Renfro (2010) found that the field of public relations is maturing but this also presents a challenge because much of the cited work resides in a specific scholarly (and one might argue self-referential) community. They believe it will be necessary to take note of Broom's (2006) warning that public relations theorists cannot work in a closed system and that public relations scholars need to see their work cited by scholars from other disciplines. In conducting the research for this book I found very little evidence of any citations of public relations theorists in other domains.

Fortunately, Pasadeos et al. (2010) also found that there is a very strong tradition of critical theory in the field and I hope this book will contribute to that genre. Many phenomena in our field today are undertheorized or explained in naïve ways, such as the role of media in society and their impact on public relations practice, the implications of globalization, and practice in the context of new organizational structures. Unfortunately, in public relations as in many other social and human sciences many “theorists went on with ‘business as usual,’ ignoring the massive alterations taking place and the controversies over their significance” (Best & Kellner, 2001, p. 4).

Rupture or Progression?

Some might argue that postmodernism is a passing fad and that modernism has won the day. And there are indeed many who wish it away because the questions and viewpoints postmodern-leaning scholars raise are uncomfortable. I wish to argue that postmodernity in many instances is an outflow of modernity, rather than a rupture with modernity; that pitting the modern against the postmodern is a form of intellectual blackmail that forces one to choose between the two (Foucault, 1984; Lyotard, 1984). They also are not binary opposites; as a result I do not support the interpretation that the two philosophies lie on a continuum with modernism on the one extreme and postmodernism on the other, as Mumby (1997) contends. These two philosophies do differ in important ways. At the same time I would argue with Best and Kellner (1991, 1997, 2001) that there need to be some criteria on which a life of activism can be built, even if those criteria are always contested and might change from situation to situation.

Some postmodern theorists argue the process of postmodernization gave rise to a form of society that is so radically different from that given within modernity that a continuation is impossible. This book, however, will take the approach Lyotard (1992) offers when he proposes that postmodernism is a condition that precedes modernism: “A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern” (p. 147). He criticized the notion of a rupture with modernity as “a way of forgetting or repressing the past … repeating it and not surpassing it” (Lyotard, 1993b, p. 48). As I have argued previously (Holtzhausen, 2000), postmodernity provides an opportunity to look at public relations differently and to find alternative solutions for a more just and democratic society by entering into a postmodern condition, to borrow Lyotard's phrase.

Lyotard's definition would challenge those who argue that postmodernism is a passing fad. If the postmodern is considered a phase through which paradigms are challenged and new ways of thinking are sought, all modern phases will be preceded by postmodern phases, even though they might not be called such. The specifics of this postmodern phase will then most certainly pass as it is absorbed into a new modern phase, which will eventually be challenged by another postmodern phase, and so forth. I also strongly support Foucault's (1984) argument that his work, and I would argue the work of others who we identify as postmodernists, is not a “doctrine, nor even … a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life” (p. 50).

This is similar to what Eagan (2009, p. 141) calls “a method or strategy” to deal with postmodernity. His arguments shed more light on the relationship between modernity and postmodernity when he says postmodernists do not pretend that “there is anything genuinely new under the sun” (p. 141) but rather view postmodernism as a tool to interpret actual and linguistic events differently. It is a dialogue with tradition and does this in a flexible way that challenges fixed modernist interpretations. The purpose of this dialogue with modernity is an attempt “to heal some of the wounds inflicted by the excesses of modernity, such as imperialism, patriarchy, racism, fascism, etc.” (p. 142). Thus postmodernism “[stings] us into acknowledging that our intellectual grids are deficient” (Farmer, 1997, p. 119, as cited in Vickers, 2005, p. 84).

At the same time postmodernism is not only about philosophy but also about the real changes in society that go hand-in-hand with different ways of looking at the current time. Ignoring postmodernism “would fly in the face of some significant evidence for seismic socio-cultural shifts” (Lyon, 1999, p. 92). An exploration of the postmodern would enable us to “discern what sorts of questions—of knowing and being, of ethics and politics—are raised” (p. 92) and “obliges us to lift our eyes above narrowly technical and discrete issues and to grapple with historical change on a grand scale” (p. 7). Many scholars indeed view postmodernism as an “epochal shift” from modernity that involves the “emergence of a new social totality with its own distinct organizing principles” (Featherstone, 1991, p. 1), mostly facilitated by new communication technologies.

Some scholars identify different types of postmodernisms, such as “epochal postmodernism” (Boje, Fitzgibbons, & Steingard, 1996, p. 63), “epistemological postmodernism” (p. 63), and “critical postmodernism” (p. 64). In epistemological postmodernism Derrida's deconstruction methods are applied to, among others, organizational discourse. Mickey's (2003) work is an example of this application in public relations. Such analyses focus on showing how so-called rational decision-making in organizations are procedures used to mask the underlying power strategies of those already in power (Cooper & Burrell, 1988, p. 110). Epistemological postmodernism reflects a sceptical postmodern perspective, whereas critical postmodernism takes an affirmative position (Rosenau, 1992). Critical postmodernism is a mid-range position that moves seamlessly between applying postmodern perspectives to modernist organizations. Although there is a transition from modern to postmodern organizing, it “is in its infancy. Modernism, modernist organization, and positivist science rule the day” (Boje et al., 1996, p. 62). I believe this also is the case in public relations and this type of approach is by far the preferred methodology for publication in journals such as Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, which is the flagship journal of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in the United States. But labeling an organizational dimension as postmodern does not guarantee the disappearance of exploitative practices in organizations. The approach that will be used in this book is a combination of epistemological postmodernism and critical postmodernism. These two approaches allow for a cross-over approach between otherwise incompatible theorists such as Bourdieu, Gramsci, Foucault, and Lyotard (Deetz, 2001).

Reading the works of those philosophers who generally are viewed as postmodern, or somewhat postmodern, such as Foucault, Lyotard, and Deleuze and Guattari, it will be hard to argue for postmodernism as a rupture. The works of these theorists even sometimes hark back to ancient philosophers such as Socrates and Plato in the sense that the works of these philosophers often are cited as laying the foundation for those principles of modernism postmodernists critique. Seeds for major changes in society were invariably planted in preceding ideologies and philosophies (Lyon, 1999).¹ Postmodern phenomena should be situated in time and eras such as the Baroque crisis in the 17th century or the turbulence at the transition from the 19th to the 20th centuries. These periods should guide us during our own time to ask the right questions, Lyon argues.

Since that time, and to this day, I am most informed and influenced about postmodernism and postmodernity through the work of Best (1995) and Best and Kellner (1991, 1997, 2001). Having read, and reread, everything they have written on this topic, their work has hugely informed my own work in and perspectives on public relations. With full recognition to these two authors, who set me on my “postmodern adventure,” to borrow from the title of their 2001 text, I follow their direction and distance myself from the extreme postmodern notion that there is a rupture between modernity and postmodernity. Therefore, this book does not intend to become a propaganda piece for postmodernism, but rather a text that, in the words of Best and Kellner, “combines the most useful of modern and postmodern perspectives” (2001, p. 5) in an effort to advance theory in the field of public relations.

At the same time I feel my work is somewhat more radical than theirs because of my extreme wariness of metanarratives, most likely because of my personal history as related in the Preface to this book. The results of the metanarrative of apartheid are now familiar to us all. From this follows my insistence on the importance of theory building and practice at a local and regional level and as a technique for empowerment because I believe change from resistance at the local level is what facilitates positive change. This also might be a consequence of my focus on public relations, a field I have now been involved in as a practitioner and academic for close on forty years. Most likely also because of my many years as a public relations practitioner the biggest influence on my work is that of Lyotard, whose perspectives in my view are particularly relevant to public relations practice. In the end one can only critique what you know. As Foucault (1989b, p. 65) says, “It's up to you, who are directly involved with what goes on in [your terrain of expertise], faced with all the conflicts of power which traverse it, to confront them and construct the instruments which will enable you to fight in that terrain.” The theories one would use to critique your terrain of knowledge will therefore also depend on their applicability to that field.

While I might have a stronger anti-foundationalist stance than Best and Kellner (n.d.) I do support their belief that theories can be compared on the basis of their logic and ability to promote an argument that “are reasonable to hold” (¶ 10), e.g. arguments against racism have stronger merits than those for racism. As they say, “Our court of appeal is reason, facts, verified bodies of knowledge, and our experience of the world itself, which is not infinitely malleable to any and all descriptions, such as the one which says the world is flat” (¶ 11). Similarly Ermarth (2001b) argues that instead of being “loonies unable to kick a stone” (p. 212) postmodernists are more respectful of detail than modernists. The reason why postmodernists argue for complexity and chaos is that they do not disregard certain facts just to fit their empiricist paradigm; “in the same way quantum theory is more precise just as it becomes less secure in the familiar empiricist way” (p. 212).

A related argument about theorizing and choosing the best theories is the one of theorizing as a “wrangle in the marketplace” (Heath, 2009, location 790). In an excellent overview of the rhetorical tradition in public relations Heath repeats the argument that theoretical approaches to public relations are similar to a marketplace because their usefulness is debated through rhetorical strategies. Theories that have the best explanatory abilities will be the ones with longevity. I find this seamless transition from metaphor to practice problematic, as I generally do when metaphors are treated as facts. First, treating theory building as capitalism has an ideological base that those who use it should be clear about. Capitalism is not the only possible explanation for the phenomenon of public relations. As I argue repeatedly, democracy offers a better explanation. Ermarth (2001b, p. 196) refers to the market as an “often dysfunctional fiction” (p. 196) and Westwood and Clegg (2003, p. 12) describe such an approach as “an overt pragmatic politics promulgated as the means to redirect and give impetus to the field” in the case of organization theory. Even Pfeffer (1997), that stalwart of positivist approaches to the field of organization theory, rejects such an approach as

tautological reasoning. Practices are presumed to be efficient because of their very existence—if they were inefficient they would disappear—and thus the logic of economic science as it is practiced is, given a particular empirical observation, to derive a proof that demonstrates the efficiency properties of what has been observed. (p. 49)

Perceived usefulness of theories also can be a symptom of intellectual laziness or resistance to acknowledge other ways of seeing. This argument also would presume that everybody knows every theory and that everybody has the same basis of knowledge and access to argue about the usefulness of all theories.

Some scholars, such as Deetz (2001), while acknowledging the basic tenets of postmodernism, proposed the alternative name of “dialogic studies” (p. 31) for this new movement, particularly because of the extreme viewpoints so often associated with it. Although I believe postmodernism goes far beyond a rhetorical approach, I do support Deetz's notion that a broader approach allows scholars to include theorists not normally associated with the postmodern movement, again resonating the views of Best and Kellner. Yet another approach is that of Cornell (1992) who prefers to call it a “philosophy of the limit” because it does not refer to a “periodization” (p. 10) of the term but rather points to the philosophical differences between the two traditions. Nonetheless, I believe that the term postmodern now has generated enough debate to become a fixed term and th...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• COMMUNICATION SERIES
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• 1 Postmodernity, Postmodernism, and Public Relations
• 2 Postmodern Ethics as a Foundation for Public Relations Activism
• 3 A Postmodern View of Public Relations History
• 4 Power and the Public Relations Function
• 5 Public Relations and the Postmodern Turn in Organization Theory
• 6 Public Relations Knowledge and Research in Postmodernity
• 7 Activism as the Postmodern Agency of Public Relations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index