Status symbols in world politics

A large body of scholarship in International Relations (IRs) has shown that numerous actors in world politics are avid observers, and sometimes obsessive seekers of social status. However, the literature has remained oddly quiet about the status symbols acquired and used to further that goal. To redress this lacuna, this special issue brings together several of IR’s leading status scholars to investigate the emergence, decline, ambiguity, functionality, and utility of status symbols in world politics. This introduction lays out the analytical and ethical warrant for studying status symbols. We formulate an interpretive framework for historicizing status symbols and exploring their temporal and spatial trajectories within international society. Specifically, this introduction develops four analytical lenses for illuminating status symbols. In short, how status symbols temporally rise to prominence and eventually whiter, how and whether they function and thus how they are received, whether their inherent multivocality enable them to cut across multiple groups of world politics, and how and to what extent status symbols can be consciously manipulated into a force for good.