Presidential gifts: The bureaucratization of inalienable material culture

In the United States, the class of material culture referred to as presidential gifts represents the complex artifacts of stately exchange and the contemporary manifestation of an elite and inalienable material culture. Through a critical analysis of this class of objects this work combines theoretical and methodological points of view in the form of lived experience and object, secondary and archival research to trace the development of the bureaucratization of presidential gifts in the United States and asks, what are the underlying motivations and implications for the contemporary exchange and acquisition of Presidential Gifts? How do objects enter these spheres of exchange? How does the Presidential gift bureaucracy exert control over these objects? How do the world leaders involved in the exchange and acquisition of these items use material culture to create meaning? And what is the significance of this material culture to the construction of national, political and cultural identities?