Economics and public relations in a time of downturn: Dismal science, unseen history, and the need for dialogue

The major originating event of this special section was the ongoing crisis that continues to cast a shadow of financial depression across the globe and has led to calls for a radical rethink of economics. In this introduction we attempt to contextualize the special section's theme and articles with a view to sparking a deeper and longer dialogue – one that emphasizes the potential for positive disciplinary exchanges – between economics and public relations. As fields, they have been respectively characterized as the dismal science and the unseen history. In order to avoid such offspring as a dismal history of economics and an unseen science of public relations, we argue that the two need both to learn from, and to appreciate, each other. In the meantime, there is another crisis stalking public relations, and it is the possibility that the recent poor history of economics might be the imminent future of public relations.