Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-290) and index.
Contents:
Introduction: Public Relations and Its Problems -- 1. Seeing Like a Publicist: How the Environment Became an Issue -- 2. Bringing the Outside In: Managing the "External Environment" -- 3. Environment, Energy, Economy: The Campaign for Balance -- 4. PR for the Public Interest: The Rule of Reason and the Hazards of Environmental Consensus -- 5. Sustainable Communication: Green PR and the Export of Corporate Environmentalism -- 6. The Climate of Publicity: Climate Advocates and the Compromise of PR -- 7. "Shared Value": Promoting Climate Change for Data Worlds -- Conclusion: We're Supposed to Be Engaging -- Appendix 1. Interviews and Observation Sites -- Appendix 2. E. Bruce Harrison Company, List of Clients, 1973-1997 -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.
Summary:
"A Strategic Nature shows how public relations has dominated public understanding of the natural environment for over one hundred years. More than spin or misinformation, PR is a social and political force that shapes how we understand and address the environmental crises we now face. Drawing on interviews, ethnography, and archival research, Melissa Aronczyk and Maria I. Espinoza offer an original account of the promotional agents who have influenced public perception of the environment since the beginning of the twentieth century, revealing how professional communicators affect how we think about public knowledge and who can legitimately produce it. Instead of focusing on just the messages or the campaigns, this book provides a conceptual framework for understanding the promotional culture around the meaning of the environment. A Strategic Nature argues that it is not possible to understand the role of the environment in our everyday lives without understanding how something called "the environment" has been invented and communicated to us throughout history. To tell this story properly requires a careful account of the evolution of the institutions, norms and movements that have pushed environmental concerns to the fore of public opinion and political action. But it also demands an examination of the simultaneous evolution of professional communicators and the formation of their institutions, norms and movements. Without this piece of the puzzle, we miss crucial ways that struggles are won, resources allocated, and beliefs fostered about environmental problems"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.