(2013). Maria I. Espinoza is a PhD candidate in the Sociology department at Rutgers University.
They applied the “Page 99 Test” to their new book, A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of American Environmentalism, and reported the following:
Page 99 of A Strategic Nature lays the ground for the surge of corporate political power in the 1980s and the special role of public relations in coordinating that power. In the early 1970s, corporations were at a low point in terms of public perception. Civil society and government concern over environmental hazards had gathered steam throughout the 1960s, and business was targeted as a major culprit. Federal regulations and national organizations to protect the environment multiplied. Companies needed a new strategy to boost their sinking reputation. They would find it by creating campaigns in the name of the public interest, with the help of their public relations advisers.Learn more about A Strategic Nature at the Oxford University Press website and visit Melissa Aronczyk's website.
Page 99 is a nice summary of the chapter it appears in (chapter 4: PR for the Public Interest). One could say it gives a sense of the larger work in that some key dynamics are present here, especially those of public relations counselors as masterminds of business and political strategy around environmental issues.
One of the most important arguments we want to put forward in this book is that our media and communication systems play outsized roles in how we understand public problems. When it comes to such a complex and abstract idea as “the environment,” we rely on the information provided to us to grasp it and to make sense of what is at stake in protecting it. By showing how PR experts and other professional communicators influence the provision of information as well as the political and social contexts in which this information appears, we reveal how powerful this kind of communication can be – especially considering the environmental crisis we’re now facing.
Each chapter in the book brings to light a particular historical moment in American life (from the early 1900s up to today) where ideas about publics, information, and the environment come together. These historical moments are organized around periods of political contention, where corporate, civic or professional groups saw the need to transform the rules governing American society. As these actions came into the public eye and contentious collectives emerged to demand change, the need for information to regain control of public narratives became more evident. What this book does to contribute to the conversation around information, publics and environmentalism is to highlight the role of the PR industry in making the environment into a matter of concern. We show the historical co-evolution of environmentalism and the PR industry and document how this co-evolution impacts our contemporary thinking about environmental change.
--Marshal Zeringue
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