Public Relations and Neoliberalism : The Language Practices of Knowledge Formation

Mockery, division, conflict, and indifference leading to intractable impasses characterize many of today''s public debates, like climate change and human rights. Public Relations and Neoliberalism is about the role public relations language practices have had in forging this reality, and what the cultural impacts are for a fair and open democratic society. The part played by public relations in propagating the rise of neoliberalism has been oversimplified and underestimated. To redress this, the book maps its direct and enduring influence from the post-war period, through key stages in the late twentieth century, to the cultural and political conditions today.

Focusing on two of the most fraught and intractable public debates of the present time: human-induced climate change and the human rights of refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants and the stateless, this book raises critical questions about the role and relationship of public relations in weakening democratic political systems. It shows a clear, but often indirect, link between PR and a neoliberal agenda that has been vastly underestimated and oversimplified as "spin." This comes at a great cost for society. Public Relations and Neoliberalism provides a panoramic view of public relations from the post-war period, when a powerful communication template propelled by the PR industry served the neoliberal agenda to create political diversion, division, and hegemony at the same time. But today, public relations is not just a tool of industry or government. Rather, it has become the default mode and style of being and relating in the world, that seeps into and affects all areas of life: professional, corporate, domestic, political, activist, and technological. And the metastasis of neoliberal meaning into so many realms has important ramifications for society and individuals. Looking at the confluences and contradictions within the logic of public relations both as a practice and in terms of how it has been theorized and understood, this book provides an important contribution to critical work in the communicative field.