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In: Current News
Representing IPRA in the Islamic Republic of Iran
 CSR , social capital and public diplomacy
Not everyone was willing to accept the invitation to the Islamic Republic of Iran. So, as I flew from Kuwait to Tehran I anticipated confronting the paradox of the country, the perceptions that informed their decisions. Would I find Iran or Persia?
The subject of the fourth International Symposium of Public Relations was the role of public relations in creating and promoting social capital. IPRA has supported the event since its inception. In a message read to the three hundred Symposium delegates, IPRA President 2009 Maria Gregova stressed the need to promote dialogue, which is at the heart of public relations practice, as an alternative to aggression and violence through interaction, mutual understanding and tolerance.
From more than fifty academic papers submitted, the conference scientific committee chose sixteen. Most approached the topic from perspective of sociologists and, since research in the field is limited, the same names cropped up again and again. From their perspective the link with public relations was less of a love match, more of an ongoing negotiation about a possible marriage. From a non-academic public relations practitioner’s perspective however, social capital is one way to assess an organisation’s relationship with its stakeholders.
To Lyda Judson Hanifan, the 1916 father of social capital, it was the glue of community involvement: in the poet John Donne’s words 'No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe'. Hence its importance in building trust in today’s ethnically, linguistically diverse Iran. Today social capital refers to the accepted norms and networks that enable collective action. Malcolm Gladwell’s connectors, mavens, and salesmen are an attempt to explain how this can be made to happen.
In my own presentation I argued that social capital is also important at a global level: that public diplomacy – once described as truthful propaganda – is one way in which countries are pursuing their goals of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy. And that corporate social responsibility or business diplomacy is increasingly being used as the tool by which (in the words of the United States Secretary of State, Ms Condoleeza Rice) the private sector can be “natural partners in our efforts to share America’s story and ideals with others.” Not that the United States is alone in this: I quoted examples from China, Germany and the United Kingdom to demonstrate this global trend. The full text of my paper is at click here
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The promotion of liberal democracy and market economy has encouraged debate which has lead to increasing talk of” indigenous solutions” and “at our own pace” in political circles in developing countries. And in my experience in public relations circles too about its practice: there’s a wish for less dictat, more dialogue among the international public relations community .
Two IPRA members were presented with Lifetime Achievement Awards at the Tehran Symposium, past President Professor Don Wright of the United States and Professor Antonio Noguero Grau of Spain.
And what of the paradox of competing perceptions of two countries in one, of Iran and of Persia, where the first public relations practitioner was employed in 1928? Dr Sarokhani, an Iranian recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award, spoke of the advocates of public relations as messengers of freedom from ignorance and darkness. Persia? Perceptions of Iran however were supported in a minor but significant way when the President’s spokesman criticised the use of the word “symposium” for the event, rather than the use of a Farsi word, criticism taken up and amplified by the media. But then is that any different from the Loi Toubon (August 4, 1994) designed for the protection of the French language? Or the separation of chador robed women from men in public transport from the women-only carriages on trains in Japan?
So the paradox remains. Except that on the national Iran Airways flight back to London these perceptions were challenged yet again. The inflight movie was Sunglasses, a popular Iranian film exploring, through a surrogate gypsy couple, the arguments for and against arranged marriage and the relationships within an Iranian marriage. The happy ending was a victory for compromise and tolerance achieved through dialogue. Perhaps those who would not accept their invitations should take a lesson from that.
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