ABSTRACT
Clarifying what the institution of advertising consists of, drawing sharper boundaries around its unique area of knowledge, and developing confidence in the importance of its work are all topics that have been discussed throughout the field, especially recently. All three are also central to problems of any profession. For the most part, theory in advertising focuses on making proper additions to our collective body of knowledge. However, in this chapter we step back and view advertising from a society-wide perspective, delving inside it only to better understand how the entire enterprise functions in its cultural environment. Figure 27.1 represents advertising as a profession. The entities included are not comprehensive; they are intended to be pertinent examples of what comprises the knowledge, organization, and individual levels of the social system referred to throughout the chapter. In searching for a definition of advertising itself Jef Richards and Catharine Curran (2002) recognize the importance of the social system context in which the research and applied work of advertising is conducted, i.e., the definition we use also has practical implications. It can determine what is taught in advertising courses, what is covered in advertising trade publications, and the domain
of the field’s professional organizations (Richards & Curran, 2002). When a court or a regulator assesses whether an activity is “advertising,” the definition applied can have far-reaching impact (p. 64). In their investigation, Richards and Curran canvassed multiple sources in both the academic and practitioner sectors of advertising and were unable to come up with a single definition. That is an important finding itself for an understanding of advertising as a field (see related discussion in Chapter 1 of this text). Their purpose was to open a discussion on what is a complex issue. This chapter builds on that discussion, attempting to provide a theoretical framework for explaining the complexity with examining a social ecology of advertising. We begin with a discussion of advertising as a profession.
