| Chapter 1: | The Role Of Public Relations In Global Issues |
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to build their global identities. A case study looks at this issue through an examination of South Africa’s hosting the World Cup.
Healthcare, a major focus of the UN’s MDGs, is the topic of chapter 4. We examine how the world healthcare agenda has privileged certain infectious diseases over chronic conditions and sanitation, giving rise to celebrity advocates and health diplomacy as facets of healthcare public relations practice. Maternal health has become inextricably bound up in issues of morality, constraining much of the public relations response to it. The pharmaceutical industry is trying to balance trade-related intellectual property rights with corporate social responsibility, and we explore the tensions that arise. Cultural resistance and positive deviance from accepted cultural norms are two ways in which culture is affecting the efficacy of public relations practice, and we use the ongoing campaign to eradicate polio to illustrate many of these issues.
Chapter 5 examines one of the most pressing global concerns, the environment. We consider a range of issues, from pollution and e-waste processing to global warming and from alternative fuels to biodiversity and deforestation. We discuss how the push for sustainability has both increased the use of greenwashing and astroturfing and given rise to more effective public–private partnerships. Indigenous peoples are using litigation public relations to achieve their goals, overturning the power dynamic of the once celebrity-driven practice. Palm oil provides the focus for a case study that illustrates the ways environmental issues connect to economic and human rights and to health issues as well.
Agricultural issues, including subsidies, factory farming, and genetically modified foods, form the basis of chapter 6. We discuss the politics of food security and how that issue is driving World Bank policies and agribusiness agendas, often at the expense of small-farm holders. Increasing numbers of public–private partnerships and activist movements driving land-reform policies are changing how public relations practices are addressing these issues. A case study comparing the effects of