The production and performance of status: Behind the scenes of an international summit

Abstract

This article examines how international summits are produced as status symbols, arguing that a host’s successful management of the event maintains summitry as a high-status practice, while hosting itself serves as a means to acquire status, owing to the complexity and risk involved. Drawing on elements of practice and performance theories, it articulates how and why status symbols can be understood as performative practices, reworking how Veblen is predominantly used in International Relations (IR), shifting from a focus on conspicuous consumption to conspicuous performance, while adopting a more expansive conceptualisation of status symbols, as one finds in Goffman. Exploring the manipulability of summitry as a status symbol, the article draws on an ethnography of the 2018 Charlevoix G7 summit, offering a ‘behind the scenes’ look at how a host produces a summit’s constitutive ‘showpiece moments’, zeroing-in on three key elements: a host’s scenario handbook, command centre and media centre. In addition to proposing theoretical and conceptual innovation in the study of international status, the article expands the scope of summit studies beyond a traditional focus on statespeople negotiating agreements, inviting exploration of summitry’s performative and symbolic dimensions.