ABSTRACT
Nearly every public relations textbook includes among its early chapters one describing the history of the profession, and there’s merit in doing so – for several reasons. Understanding the cultural roots of public relations will help the practitioner and the scholar to appreciate the dynamic forces that have shaped the discipline and continue to influence its development. Second, a grasp of how those forces affect the profession will allow the practitioner and the scholar to predict, anticipate and be prepared for directions the profession is likely to take in the coming years. Additionally, the international practitioner who understands the correlation between public relations history and practice will be able to analyze environments critically in regions and countries
Before embarking on a survey of public relations around the globe and exploring approaches to practice across borders and cultures, it is useful to examine the development of modern public relations within the context of the forces that spawned it. Using the US as our benchmark
for comparative purposes, we shall look at the dynamic conditions that fostered the need for the profession we now call public relations, and we shall consider global trends influencing its continued maturation.
