Communitarianism

In 1988, Dean Kruckeberg and Kenneth Starck argued that the concept of community should be used as the basis for the theory and practice of public relations. Their book coincided with a modern communitarian movement. The debate over the proper balance between the individual and the community goes back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. In Western society, there are two fundamental approaches to explaining the world around us that have been competing for dominance—liberalism and communitarianism. While liberalism has been the dominant paradigm in American society, there has been a significant resurgence in communitarian thought with both theoretical and programmatic implications.

Three common themes among the major communitarian theorists (Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer) include the following. First, the liberal position that the state should be neutral in regard to ends is harmful to the development of community. Second, state neutrality with regard to ends is itself a value choice that is not neutral. Third, liberalism sees human rights as transcendent and universal rather than historically contingent. In terms of a programmatic agenda, American communitarians have tended to group themselves around Amitai Etzioni, the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, and the journal The Responsive Community: Rights and Responsibilities. They argue for a “four-point agenda”: “a moratorium on the minting of most, if not all, new rights; reestablishing the link between rights and responsibilities; recognizing that some responsibilities do not entail rights; and, most carefully, adjusting some rights to the changed circumstances” (Etzioni, 1993, pp. 4–11). This agenda, in turn, leads to recommendations and lobbying on various issues including strengthening family structures and implementing neighborhood associations.

A metatheory is grouped around four elements or questions: epistemology, ontology, perspective or focus, and value. In epistemology, the communitarian approach is constructivist in approach. This approach holds that knowledge “arises not out of discovery but from interaction between knower and known” (Littlejohn, 1992, p. 32). In terms of ontological questions, communitarians see the community or society as their basic starting point, not the individual. From a perspective, or definitional viewpoint, the field of public relations is unclear. No agreed-upon definition of the field of public relations makes the issue of a foundation, or metatheory, for the field so important. Agreement on a foundational starting point might make it easier to agree upon a set of definitions that would stem from that starting point. With regard to the questions of values or ethics, communitarians hold that there are no universally valid ethical principles. Stress is on character and virtue. As a result, history and tradition play a major role in ethical analysis. (See the analysis in MacIntyre's After Virtue.)

Several implications are involved in accepting communitarianism as an approach to the field [Page 169]of public relations. One implication impacts communication models. Communitarianism would seem to mandate a two-way symmetrical model for the practice of public relations. Strong parallels exist between the communitarian worldview and the symmetrical models as presented by James E. Grunig and between the liberal worldview and the asymmetrical models of public relations. The symmetrical models, like communitarianism, are based upon an interactive epistemology, relationships between individuals as the correct ontological approach, define the public relations world as an interactive place, hold that theory is not value free, and that a function of theory is idealistic and change oriented. Among the assumptions of communitarianism are a need for social cohesion, agreement on core values, and citizen empowerment. If the goal of public relations is bringing public and private interests into harmony as the Public Relations Society of America Code suggests, then fostering these values is important.

...