Read a selection of free hot topic articles from the journal.

What prompted you to write this book?

Two personal perspectives. With over twenty years of experience in the industry as a public relations practitioner, Margalit identified a significant gap in the way public relations was practiced and perceived in Israel compared to the developed countries she visited as a member of the international PR community. While studying and working in the US she became intrigued by those differences. Israel for example, had no academic program in public relations till 2011 while in the US it was a recognised discipline within many universities. She decided to respond to scholars such as Sriramesh and Vercic who in the late 1990s called for the discipline of public relations to research the profession within the context of specific cultural and political environments rather than follow the assumption that all public relations experiences follow the US model.
As a Scottish republican, David has been questioning national identity almost since birth and has been researching PR since 1997. Only recently, however, did he appreciate the formative role of public relations in personal and national narratives and the impact of national identities on the evolution of PR as a profession. Our joint trips to Israel helped us both to identify the interplay of nation building and PR as a distinctive way to understand both the uniqueness of the Israeli system and its possible relevance to other unique national experiences.

What makes Israel stand out from other countries, in terms of the use of PR to inform/build national identity?

Israel, at 65, is relatively a new state that was established by immigrants from around the world with about 70 different cultural identities and languages. The Zionist movement that established the state made a phenomenal effort to unite them into one society and to create a new Israeli identity. The first public relations practitioners were employed by Zionist institutions. They used PR to enlist the new immigrants to the challenging tasks involved in building a nation and a state. They also provided the enlisting narratives, symbols, and emotional messages that inspired the sacrifice of personal individual goals, and sometimes, lives, for the sake of building a state.

Does the definition of PR change when used in the context of nation building?

Current definitions of public relations emphasise the role of the practitioners as facilitators of dialogue between organisations and their constituents, and as builders of networks of relationships. We argue that in situations of nation building, the pressure to use propaganda-style communication is intense. The whole society, including the media, tends to cooperate and support the agendas set by the national leadership. Typically, there is no tolerance for dissident voices as happens during wars. Enlisted societies rarely offer the democratic environment that allows PR to flourish in line with contemporary definitions.
 

Do other techniques form national identities in Israel?

There is a special term in Hebrew called Hasbara which, literally, means “explanation.” It is used to describe the effort of government, or other organisations, to influence public opinion within Israel and abroad. A paternalistic approach to persuasive communication, Hasbara is based on the assumption that the receivers of the message are ignorant or lack the background knowledge to understand correctly without guidance. Hasbara, or the lack of it, is often blamed for the poor image of Israel abroad and the international criticism on its behaviour, especially in the context of its conflict with Palestinians. Hasbara is often used to describe public relations campaigns though it is closer to propaganda and does not recognise the need for interactive dialogue.

What is the difference between political propaganda and public relations, or is it that political propaganda is a tool of public relations?

Any type of propaganda, not just political propaganda, is one sided and involves half-truth or lies while ignoring or shutting down the voices of opponents. Public relations aims to be more dialogical and to present activists and other critical voices to the decision makers of their organisations. The profession aspires to ethical communication and to the building of relations of trust with stakeholders, the public, and the media. In reality, however, it can operate akin to many features of propaganda and only pay lip service to the attitudes and demands of internal and external publics.

Why do you think PR has not been examined before in terms of nation building and national identity?

There have been a few scholars who did examine this interaction and, more recently, there’s been increased research in the area. Nonetheless, most of the literature on public relations has been produced since the 1920s in the US. That literature assumed American leadership of the profession and the academic research. With the rise of globalisation, and less US-centric approaches, scholars have studied different professional experiences in different parts of the world. Jacquie L’Etang’s (2004) pioneering book on the history of public relations in Britain was a first of its kind. In a sense our book follows her steps by providing a different story from another political, economic, and socio-cultural environment.

What is the overall message of the book?

That unity should not ride roughshod over democracy and that dissenting voices need to be heard. We see an urgent need to make the future activities of public relations contribute positively and transparently to the growth of “fully functioning societies.” In a climate of nation building and nationalism, PR can be too easily pressed into the service of government propaganda. It needs to build a history of resistances to these pressures. By remembering that it functions best in a democratic environment, it can help to speak truth to power to preserve that environment. Israel’s success in providing narratives that enlist society to unite and to sacrifice for the state offers lessons that unity sometimes comes at the cost of democracy.

If you were pressed to name one lesson to be taken away from this research, what would it be?

We hope our narrative will encourage public relations practitioners and scholars from all over the world to make their histories visible, to learn from both their positive and negative aspects and to share both as widely as possible. Our deeper aspiration is that PR practitioners, activists, and media workers can jointly contribute to more democratic societies.

Who did you write this book for?

We have ongoing discussion with Margalit’s family and friends in Israel and Israelis, Jews and non-Jews outside of the country. While writing the book we were trying to clarify our position to them and work out how our experiences in our nations had shaped us. Our colleagues and friends from all over the world who research and study the role of public relations in society were a significant audience in our mind. We also tried to create a book that would help Israelis understand PR and the Israeli PR industry to acknowledge its professional roots and be inspired by the socially responsible aspirations of contemporary public relations practitioners across the world.
 

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The need for this Sourcebook stems from recent innovations in political communication involving the use of advanced statistical techniques, innovative conceptual frameworks, the rise of digital media as both a means by which to disseminate and study political communication, and methods recently adapted from other disciplines, particularly psychology, sociology, and neuroscience. Chapters will have a social-scientific orientation and will explain new methodologies and measures applicable to questions regarding media, politics, and civic life. The Sourcebook covers the major analytical techniques used in political communication research, including surveys (both original data collections and secondary analyses), experiments, content analysis, discourse analysis (focus groups and textual analysis), network and deliberation analysis, comparative study designs, statistical analysis, and measurement issues. Order a copy or view inside this book to find out more.
 

To receive a 20% discount on your copy of Dynamics of Change in the Persian Gulf, simply enter the code GDC71 when you check out.

1. You’re regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on the international relations of the Middle East. How did you become interested in teaching International Relations? (Anoush is Professor of International Relations at Durham University, UK and was the University’s Dean of Internationalisation, 2009-2011 as well as the founding Head of the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University (2004-9)

I must say my lecturers during my undergraduate degree provided the inspiration for my perpetual learning! They opened so many doors in my mind that frankly I did not know even existed. Nevertheless, the range of subjects I was studying provided the basic intellectual infrastructure for my future learning and research. Combining political ideology, philosophy and economics helped me in putting the planks in place for my interest in international relations and international political economy. My research since then has been rooted in these two extraordinary disciplines.

2. You’ve written many books already (Globalization and Geopolitics in the Middle East: Old Games, New Rules ; The International Politics of the Red Sea; Iran and the Rise of its Neoconservatives; Globalization, 9/11 and the Middle East; and The Foreign Policies of Middle East States- to name but a few). What factors led you to writing Dynamics of Change in the Persian Gulf?

What an interesting question, as the Dynamics of Change in the Persian Gulf is in some ways a culmination of a number of strands that my earlier writings have explored. Firstly, I wanted to develop a conceptual framework for the analysis of sub-regions such as the Gulf. The classic work of Buzan and Waever provided the tools for understanding ‘regional’ politics – so called regional security complexes. What I wanted to do (similar to Greg Gause) was to ‘drill down’ to the sub-regional level and apply the RSC model to the Persian Gulf. I wanted to understand its insecurities and think about how these may be overcome.

But this was just the beginning, for having established the conceptual framework for understanding sub-regional analysis, I wanted to try and make sense of the drivers of change in this sub-region and the underlying currents which have determined inter-state relations here and also the sub-region’s interactions with the rest of the international system. So, I look at the nature of the sub-region’s globalization, for example, but in this I was keen to show that as globalization has become an ‘unevenizing’ process in the sub-region – which I detail extensively – it can at the same time magnify differences in the Gulf and thus raise tensions even further. I also wanted to show the dynamism of the sub-region by exploring the Gulf’s ‘eastward’ shift. But, always I have been asking what do these currents mean for the Gulf itself? How do they change it?

Insecurity has been one of the sub-region’s main problems, leading to three major wars and dozens of other internal and cross-border security incidents. I wanted to go beyond just cataloguing the insecurities besetting the sub-region and try and show the longer term impact and consequences of conflict and violence on the well-being of the sub-region as a whole.

Then there is the discussion about the process of political change in the Gulf – what has been going on? Previous studies had tended to focus on one side or country or another, which has yielded a rich literature on the Gulf monarchies, Iran, or Iraq. I wanted to go a step further and survey the political process right across the Persian Gulf, in the republics and the monarchies.
This book, in its four parts, tries to explain the sources of the sub-region’s dynamism, drivers of change and the frictions that these generate. Only the reader can judge if this has been done adequately, or well enough!

3. Have you read any Routledge books? If so, which is your favourite Routledge book at the moment?

I have many Routledge books! Currently I am enjoying Murray and Brown’s edited volume entitled Multipolarity in the 21st Century. I am actually using their insights in a volume on Middle East-East Asian Nexus that I am currently co-editing with a colleague at St Andrews.

4. How do you feel about the future of the Persian Gulf?

I am worried about the future stability of the Persian Gulf, the security of its smaller states, and its future in a post-hydrocarbons world. The latter may be a long way off yet, but the Gulf’s inter-state problems, underpinned as they are by religious and ethnic tensions, are clear and present dangers. My main concern is that for all the sub-region’s importance, to the riparian states themselves as much as to the rest of the international system, we have failed to devise credible ways and means of addressing its security short-comings! There is, for example, no acceptable security structure for mediating between its states, and indeed moderating. All its members are busy building huge arsenals on the back of unprecedentedly-high oil prices and I worry that someday in not too distant a future one party or another will use its arsenal for tactical advantage. Such an act will be a strategic mistake, setting the whole region back for a generation or more, as was the case in the 1980s and 1990s.

But, I also am hopeful that the actors themselves, as well as the rest of the international community, will find an inclusive and constructive mechanism for building confidence. The key to this, I think, lies in the peaceful resolution of Iran’s nuclear dispute with the international community, which by definition will include the neighbours. I am also hopeful that the Gulf Cooperation Council will mature into a robust regional organization, and, learning from the EU, will increasingly lend itself to the promotion of dialogue and peaceful resolution of disputes in the Gulf itself but also beyond.

5. You’re the Series Editor for the Routledge Durham Modern Middle East and Islamic World Series. How did this come about? How would you describe the series?

The Series came about as a consequence of a number of conversations that I had had with academics from around the world and which I related to colleagues at Routledge, and the expression of my frustration that at that time little systematic focus was being given to the study of the Middle East in its wider context. We both agreed that there was a clear need for systematizing – an awkward word, I know! – scholarship on the region and with some 30 volumes under our belt (and counting), the rest, as they say, is history.

I am likely to be biased here, but I would say that this is one of the most innovative book series out there! Its aim is to encourage new and cutting edge research on a wide range of subjects, topics, and issues pertaining to the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. But the Series is also unique for its philosophy of encouraging and supporting the research of early career researchers and budding scholars while also publishing the works of some of the greatest and experienced minds of our time. The mix of volumes is also, I would like to think, interesting and thought-provoking – just look at what we commission and what we have published!

6. You’ve said that Dynamics of Change provides the most complete analysis of the geopolitics of the Persian Gulf since the Second World War. What makes this book different from others on the market and why do you think people should buy Dynamics of Change?

I would like the reader to appreciate the complexity, and in a sense the uniqueness of the Persian Gulf and the critical role that this sub-region plays in the international system. But I also want the reader to see the wider canvass; this is just one part, albeit an important one, of the complex international order and dynamics of change here should not be divorced from the global currents. The comprehensiveness of the study also sets it apart from many others.

To summarise in a (long!) sentence: This book compacts years of experience of watching the political and economic currents flowing in and out of the Persian Gulf, and as such provides a one-stop shop for better understating what drives change in this important sub-region and the forces which are shaping it today and will be into the future.
 

Psychology Revivals is a new initiative aiming to re-issue a wealth of academic works which have long been unavailable. Encompassing a vast range from across the Behavioural Sciences, Psychology Revivals draws upon a distinguished catalog of imprints and authors associated with Routledge and Psychology Press, restoring to print books by some of the most influential scholars of the last 120 years.

Click here to view our Psychology Revivals 2013 online catalog.

If you are interested in Revivals in the Humanities and Social Sciences, click here.

Scott Allison is Professor of Psychology at the University of Richmond. His research program focuses on human belief systems about heroes, villains, legends, leaders, underdogs, and martyrs.

Scott has served on the editorial boards of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice and has published nearly 100 articles and two book on heroes with George Goethals:  Heroes, What They Do & Why We Need Them, published in 2011 by Oxford University Press, and  Heroic Leadership: A Taxonomy of 100 Exceptional Individuals, published by Routledge in 2013.

Scott's work has been featured in media outlets such as National Public Radio, USA Today, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Slate Magazine, MSNBC, CBS, and the Christian Science Monitor. He is the recipient of the University of Richmond's Distinguished Educator Award and the Virginia Council of Higher Education's Outstanding Faculty Award.

George R. Goethals holds the E.Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professorship in Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond. Previously he taught at Williams College where he was Chair of the Department of Psychology, founding Chair of the Program in Leadership Studies, Acting Dean of the Faculty, and Provost. Goethals graduated with a BA from Harvard College and holds a PhD in social psychology from Duke University.

George explores leadership from psychological and historical perspectives. With Georgia Sorenson and James MacGregor Burns he edited the Encyclopedia of Leadership (Sage, 2004), with Sorenson, The Quest for a General Theory of Leadership (Elgar, 2006), and with Crystal Hoyt and Donelson Forsyth, Leadership at The Crossroads, Psychology and Leadership (Praeger, 2008). His recent research focuses on presidential debates, the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, and the role of biography in shaping our understanding of leadership. With Scott Allison, he is author of Heroes, What They Do & Why We Need Them, published in 2011 by Oxford University Press, and Making Heroes: The Construction of Competence, Courage and Virtue published in 2012 in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 46.

To find out more about the Scott and George's research on heroes, please visit their website at http://blog.richmond.edu/heroes/ 
 

Dorothy Rowe, the author of Living with the Bomb talks us through why this text is as important today as it was when it was first published in 1985.

'The importance of Living with the Bomb has increased vastly since it was first published. Then, only the major powers, the USA, the USSR and the UK had nuclear weapons. Now many more countries, countries like North Korea, Israel, India and Pakistan, have nuclear weapons. The nuclear devices themselves come in many forms and can be delivered in many different ways. Old enmities continue in struggles over who should own what land and whose religious belief should triumph over all others. Leaders have been deposed, and not all have gone quietly. Millions of people have lost their homes and livelihoods and now live in camps, dependent on charity from the wealthier nations. A country like Syria, once wealthy and peaceful with different faiths living side by side, is now torn apart, its cities destroyed, in a struggle that shows no sign of ending.

Meanwhile, the climate is changing. As the earth warms the icecaps are melting. As the waters rise, in Bangladesh thousands try to flee to safety but are held back by the wall that India is constructing to keep them out. Wealthy countries do not welcome penniless refugees.

We cannot solve the problems of nuclear weapons, refugees and climate change while we continue to define ourselves in terms of the group we belong to and the stranger who, being a stranger, must be our enemy. We need to learn to see ourselves as one people, the people who inhabit the Earth which is our home.'

Living with the Bomb describes our different forms of denial and the effects such denial has, as well as the process of change we must undertake in order to secure the continuation of the human race.

For more information on this title and to order your copy, visit: http://www.routledge.com/9780415831901

Edited alongside Bethan Davies, Clive Upton's latest project, Analysing 21st Century British English: Conceptual and Methodological Aspects of the 'Voices' Project, publishes on 13th May 2013.

Analysing 21st Century British English explores both issues of ideology and representation behind the BBC Voices project and uses to which the emerging data can be put in the study of language variation and change.

Add the code APELL13 to your basket to receive 20% discount on titles in this series throughout April

Add the code APLL13 to your basket to receive 20% discount on this series throughout April

In 1989 an Open University researcher, Rupert Wegerif, collected data in Lyn’s classroom, studying children’s talk as they worked together at computers. When this Thinking Together research revealed that the children’s discussion skills were extremely limited, Lyn devised and taught a series of Talk Lessons. These lessons reflected the research team’s interest in exploratory talk as described by Neil Mercer (University of Cambridge). After a short series of Talk Lessons, the research team recorded increased incidence of exploratory talk. This was heartening; subsequently we found that a benefit of the talk lessons and Thinking Together approach is that children not only learn better in curriculum areas, but also find out how to discuss things with others in a measured, enquiring and exploratory way – an invaluable life skill.

Lyn gained her PhD from De Montfort University in 2002. She has since taught education students at Bedford, Northampton and Cambridge University. She promotes a Talk for Learning approach in which students and children are made aware of the power and purpose of classroom discussions, taught how to conduct and value exploratory talk, and apply their developing talk skills to their curriculum learning.

With Neil Mercer, Lyn now provides in-service education courses for teachers. These establish the theoretical background for importance of teaching discussion skills, and provide practical strategies so that teachers and school managers can integrate effective talk into classrooms. Workshops have taken place in many parts of England (e.g. Coventry, Bradford, Cornwall and Newport, Gwent) as well as in European venues (e.g. Antwerp and Amsterdam). Lyn’s next course is for Museum Education Officers.

The idea of enabling children to be able to communicate better with one another motivated Lyn to write books for teachers which have been published by Routledge. Each book has a different focus but all support teachers in raising children’s awareness of ways that they can develop their thinking through talk with their peers. The books offer practical strategies based on classroom research and extensive experience.

Through research and teaching, Lyn established a novel approach to stimulating discussion, called Talking Points. Talking Points resources stimulate and sustain discussion. Listening to children as they talk about their ideas helps teachers to understand their current thinking. Listening to one another helps children to articulate and examine their own ideas, relating them to other points of view. Children find out how to question, explain and elaborate, and crucially, how to work towards a negotiated agreement. The resources are popular with children because they offer a chance to be heard, and to have ideas taken seriously. The books set out ways that teachers can generate their own talk-focused resources for particular topics or areas of the curriculum; suggest activities based on the group’s discussion; and show how it is possible to assess children by listening to their ideas.
 

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Author Bio:

Robert R. Janes is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship, a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester (UK), an Adjunct Professor of Archaeology at the University of Calgary, Canada, and the former President and CEO of the Glenbow Museum (1989-2000) (www.glenbow.org). He is also the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Biosphere Institute of the Bow Valley (www.biosphereinstitute.org) - an NGO committed to the ecological integrity of the mountain region where he lives.

Prior to his Glenbow appointment, Janes was the founding Director of the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre (1976-1986) and the founding Executive Director of the Science Institute of the Northwest Territories (1986-1989), both in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories - one of Canada’s most remote regions. His museum books include Museums and the Paradox of Change (1995; 1997; 2013), Looking Reality in the Eye: Museums and Social Responsibility (with Gerald T. Conaty - 2005), Museum Management and Marketing (with Richard Sandell - 2007), and Museums in a Troubled World (2009). Janes has worked in and around museums for 37 years as a director, consultant, author, editor, archaeologist, board member, teacher and volunteer. He has devoted his career to championing museums as important social institutions - capable of making a difference in the lives of individuals and their communities.

Praise for Museums and the Paradox of Change:

“Janes’ richly textured, incisive and extraordinarily candid analysis of organisational change provides readers with a highly original, valuable and compelling suite of insights for contemporary museum thinking and practice”. – Richard Sandell, University of Leicester, UK.

“Janes’ book, in the third edition, offers incalculable fresh contributions to our understanding the constant, necessary dynamic tension between social and financial capital in society’s cultural spaces. He is a first ranked thinker, here drawing others of his ilk into a 21st Century dialogue of change management. Every museum, library, archive, and theater leader and every consultant to these fields should have a dog-eared copy of this book.” – Mary Case, Museums Consultant, USA.

“A very inspiring work that details the organizational change of Glenbow Museum. Not only has it unveiled the social relationships between the different positions inside museum space, but also, through reflective and critical thinking, it has illuminated the value of the museum in contemporary world. By arguing the value and purpose of the museum, Robert Janes creatively harnesses the power of management to vitalize museums and civil society. This book is an honest voice and impassioned manifesto, which is indispensable for all the museums that are seeking to map their future.” – Hsu Huang, Editor-in-Chief, Museology Quarterly; Associate Curator, National Museum of Natural Science, Taiwan.

Further Reading and Viewing:

For more on Museums in a Troubled World see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSdvEtOxavs

For more on Museums and the Responsibility Gap see: http://vimeo.com/46392120

For Dr. Janes's lecture on The Mindful Museum see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkXcm2ImwqQ

For more information on the Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship, click here: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmmc20