Although PR scholarship has significantly extended its methodological, reflective and theoretical range, the accompanying resurgence in PR history scholarship still lags behind. This book aims to take apart existing PR history and reconstruct ways of doing it better - to widen the scope of PR by freeing its pasts, presents and futures from the effects of narrow, ideologically driven histories and methods of historiography.





An explicitly revisionist project, this book sets out to use discourses around history to deliberately influence the present and future. It accepts that the past is irretrievable and advocates more openly self-critical, and more diverse PR history writing, vital to generating both valid PR histories and viable PR futures. In the process, it calls into question assumptions of authority embedded in existing PR history research.





Contesting PR's pasts to reclaim its futures, this challenging text deconstructs the range of existing PR history and reworks it to align with contemporary transnational challenges and social movements. In doing so, it updates PR history and augments PR theory for the next stage in their development. It will arouse debate for all scholars, educators and students of PR, Communication studies and cultural history.