۱- Introduction: an age of interdisciplinarity and a search for soul

۲- Jurisdiction perspectives (1): Professions, promotional disciplines, and the fight for the good 2. Jurisdiction perspectives (2): is social marketing pure soul? 2. Jurisdiction perspectives (3): the evolution of social marketing in Aotearoa New Zealand

۳- Developments in social marketing

۴- New Zealand’s influence on social marketing

References

Abstract

Positioning the present as an age of interdisciplinarity, we explore the potential for development through selected intersections, primarily with PR and social marketing. We situate this exploration in the further context of the contemporaneous search for what some management theorists have called soul. In the process, as well as contributing to the PR and social marketing bodies of knowledge, we seek to clarify academic deliberations about selecting productive and prosocial interdisciplinary intersections. To begin to illustrate parallel process in practice, we embed practitioner perspectives in an account of social marketing in Aotearoa New Zealand1 . Our intent is to look for ways in which both scholars and practitioners could get better at it. We conclude by suggesting that intersecting with social marketing can also help PR tackle three major and continuing issues: methods, outcome evaluations, and reputation.

Introduction: an age of interdisciplinarity and a search for soul

Since the 1990s, proponents of interdisciplinarity (Fuller, 1993; Kockelmans, 1998; Hansson, 1999; Payne, 1999) have argued that interdisciplinarity offers a conceptual and practical means of answering questions and providing solutions to problems that cannot be successfully addressed by single discipline approaches. Klein (1996) allows that interdisciplinarity can be driven either by the aim of unifying knowledge or by social intent and Aram (2004) argues that it is the scholars who determine the focus. Along those lines, as self-confessed interdisciplinary ideologues themselves, Fuller (1993) “believe that, unchecked, academic disciplines follow trajectories that increasingly isolate themselves from the most interesting intellectual and social issues of our time” (p. 29). Although, Frodeman (2017) later claimed it to have “been 25 years in the making” (p. vii), he became lead editor of the groundbreaking first edition of The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (Frodeman et al., 2010). Already, Braun and Schubert’s (2003) article “A Quantitative View on the Coming of Age of Interdisciplinarity in the Sciences 1989–۱۹۹۹” published statistics from the last decade of the 20th century that underpinned this decade as part of a burgeoning of interdisciplinarity, on the cusp of a full age of interdisciplinarity in this century. In a different field but engaging with the similar Zeitgeist of intellectual and social issues, Adler and Jermier’s (2005) seminal Academy of Management Journal Editors’ Forum called for “Developing a Field with More Soul” (p. 941). Although the term may be conceptually vague, PR has long had a practical stake in developing soul.