Reimagining a glocal framework : the search for academic legitimacy in Chinese public relations discipline from 1985 to 2018

This paper provides a national narrative of the rise of public relations (PR) as an academic discipline in China, particularly how the PR discipline has emerged and figured in global and local historical events and struggled for legitimacy throughout China’s modernization from 1985 to 2018. Based on our historical review, five distinct periods in search of academic legitimacy have characterized the national modernization in China. Universal theoretical perspectives – PR’s introduction as a discipline in a modernizing economy – are inadequate to explain this history. By showing divergent forces affecting academic legitimacy, this study contributes a historical perspective on understanding the PR discipline in China within a glocalization context. Our paper proposes a ‘glocal’ framework to show the divergent historical stresses affecting PR’s academic legitimacy in China’s recent historical context.