According to Derina Holtzhausen, public relations is always political.
According to James Grunig, public relations professionals must be part of the dominant coalition in order to be effective.
That means public relations professionals are always seeking power. Or does it?
A postmodern view of power recognizes that true power is within the individual and their ability to resist authoritarian power structures in an effort to be fair. Calling on the writings of Lyotard and Thebaud, Holtzhausen explains that "To be just one has to choose, take sides, but one has to do so without criteria, in this context the only criterion is the moral impulse to the Other*."
One must understand that power structures begin at a local level where language games and culture are personally felt. Thomas Mickey describes language games that are played by communicators every day. Some are directly meant to define hierarchy and create a power structure, like the relationship that exists between a supervisor and employee. Others are implied based on the interaction between individual in a given community.
Furthermore language games are defined by the situation and the players within a community. Although we live in a global society, the circumstances are not the same for a middle class person living in Boise, Idaho as it would be for someone living in London, Paris, or Moscow.
Power structures have long been defined by a family model where the male figure goes to work and the female nurturer stays at home to raise a family. The modern world has allowed this structure to persist into religious, government, corporate and social settings. This is a metanarrative that causes consensus and forces people to go against their will by allowing them to view subjugation as normal.
A postmodern view of power calls for this normative structure to be broken. It cannot be fixed, it must be broken to be fair to all marginalized individuals. Moreover, the act of consensus must be discouraged.
A postmodern view recognizes that power comes from all directions. Holtzhausen combines the act of dissensus and dissymetry to create a multidirectional dissensus within organizations that puts the public relations professional at the center of all conflict. By being in the center of conflict, the public relations professional can smoothly transform into an organizational activist.
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*The Other is defined by Holzhausen as a marginalized person or group of persons.
