status symbols and luxury goods 35
and terrains and too vulnerable for combat.^1 Yet the Germans did not stop
there. Their most ambitious tank design was the Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte,
which was expected to weigh close to a thousand tons. At such weight, the
Ratte would have been too heavy for regular roads, bridges, or any rail trans
portation. Moreover, it would have been a slow and highly visible target
for enemy fire. The Ratte proved too great a challenge, and despite Hitler’s
enthusiasm, no prototype of this steel monster was ever built (Chamber
lain and Doyle 1999 ; Estes and Palmer 2014 ). As with Zam Zammah, at
a certain point, the stupendous increase in size and weight became an op
erational liability. The process through which a strategically viable piece of
weaponry grows out of proportion is illustrative of the broader dynamics
of status symbols in international relations. The evolution of such symbols
tends to involve a spiral of exaggeration that distorts a useful object into a
showpiece of conspicuous consumption.
The symbolic value of the cannon in eighteenth century India had impor
tant strategic repercussions. Regional prestige structures, which generated
these increasingly useless guns, heightened British military supremacy and
ultimately contributed to the British takeover of the subcontinent (Bryant
2004 , 458 ). Yet despite such significant implications, the study of symbols
tends to be overlooked by the international relations literature. Barring sev
eral notable exceptions (Jervis 1989 ; Eyre and Suchman 1996 ; O’Neill 1999 ,
2006 ; Hurd 2007 ; Kaufman 2001 ), international relations theory tends to
marginalize the role of symbols, relegating them to the realm of curiosities
and anecdotes. Hurd ( 2007 , 49 ) argues that this marginalization stems from
a Weberian worldview that promotes a false dichotomy between symbolic
politics and rationality. Symbolism is deemed part of a traditional, prera
tional world that will be inevitably replaced by a modern and reasoned one.
The study of symbols is thus a study of anachronistic inferior relics facing ex
tinction. The Veblenian framework rejects the dichotomy between prestige
policies and rationality and instead offers a rationalist account for prestige
seeking behavior. The analysis of status symbols developed in this chapter
continues to build on this premise, relying heavily on the work of sociologist
Erving Goffman.
In this chapter I examine five aspects of status symbols and luxury
goods in international relations. I begin by developing a functionalist ex
planation for the utility of status symbols in international relations. In the
following section I explore the evolution and diffusion of status symbols
before focusing more closely on the role of status symbols as classifying
markers. In the last two sections of this chapter I investigate what makes
