Public relations is engaged with issues of identity as (a) a commodity created for clients and employers; (b) its own ‘contested terrain’ as a field; and (c) the professional identity of practitioners. The first of these is central to practice, given “the public relations activity of large organisations today . . . is identity-related in that each organisation must work to establish its unique ‘self’ while connecting its concerns to those of the ‘cultural crowd”’ (Cheney & Christensen, 2001a, p. 234). Others have engaged with the production of organisational symbols and discursive identity (Grunig, 1993; Mickey, 2003; Roper, 2005) and the creation of identities for individuals (Motion, 1999). The identity of the field (b) has been explored as a jurisdictional issue (Hutton, 1999, 2001, 2010), a ‘contested terrain’ (Cheney & Christensen, 2001b), and more recently as an argument for a public relations identity as a social practice in a complex society, centrally involved in concepts such as trust and legitimacy and issues of power and language, to be investigated from a constructivist perspective (Ihlen & Verhoeven, 2012). This continues and develops discussions about the paradigms that shape its research and selfunderstanding (Curtin, 2012; Edwards, 2012; Pieczka, 1996). There has been debate around the content of identity for public relations practitioners: for example whether practitioners see themselves as ethical guardians or advocates (Baker, 2008; Bowen, 2008). Literature concerning roles (White & Dozier, 1992; Zerfass, Vercic, Tench, Verhoeven, & Moreno, 2013) could also be grouped under the heading of identity and others have explored how practitioners identify or distance themselves from public relations as a profession (Jeffrey & Brunton, 2012). Less scrutinised is the means by which professional identity in public relations practitioners, both collectively and individually, is produced. One exception is Edwards’ (۲۰۱۰) use of Bourdieu to articulate how PR identity is gendered and racially defined; another is Curtin and Gaither (2005, 2007) use of the circuit of culture (see below)to examine public relations identity as one elementin a dynamic set of fluctuating relationships. This paper considers literature regarding the production and maintenance of professional identity, then examines two, apparently incompatible, approaches to such work, before returning to public relations theory and practice in the concluding remarks.