Conference Swag as Artifact

On an early June day I find myself on the sixth floor of a large hotel in Midtown Manhattan. I am there for a large supportive housing conference. (Incidentally, it is the second time I have been in this same hotel for a housing conference in a month, but the conference-industrial complex of hotels in Midtown Manhattan is a subject for another post). Late in the day, I step out of the breakout sessions to tend to non-conference business. The atrium, lined with vendor tables, is largely quiet. In the emptiness, without the hundreds of attendees and the white noise of professional pleasantries, the piles of vendor “swag”—conference souvenirs—come into relief.

This conference is famous for its swag; every year at check-in, attendees receive a reusable foldaway nylon bag bearing the organization’s logo. When a colleague spots such a bag “in the wild” (I carry one from years past in my backpack in case I need to pick up something at the store), it generally elicits a knowing glance or chuckle and a comment about how helpful and sturdy the bags are. Still, the items I see in front of me, largely picked over by this point in the day, sit unguarded; the vendors, if they have not already left their post (and abandoned their loot), are no longer at attention attempting to engage every passerby. In that moment though, it occurred to me that these objects could be a way to think differently—and more materially—about the politics of the conference, and indeed the field itself.

As material forms, these swag items are most likely manufactured outside the United States and then branded for the vendor by an intermediary who augments the same object for hundreds of different vendors. In spatial terms, each artifact is produced in some dispersed location, then shipped around the globe, momentarily consolidated on a vendor table at a conference in a place, and then re-dispersed as conference attendees carry them away.  The mass production, wholesaling, import/export, and retailing  of swag items is big business–worth up to $64 billion globally on an annual basis.  It is also an environmental problem–up to 40% of swag items end up in landfills.

But here and now, these swag items exert a more immediate effect.  They are tokens that connect a community in this fraught political moment. (What will the swag be like next year? How will tariffs affect what shows up on those tables? And does that matter?) As objects, by their appearance at this conference, they have entered into a specific actor network that connects artifacts to interpretive communities: a pencil branded for an architecture firm picked up at a housing conference is socialized differently from another pencil with different branding picked up at another conference held in this very same space. Same form, different network, different meaning. The food in the bag held closed by the white chip clip from a social enterprise food service provider picked up here may be very different from the food in the bag held closed by the same chip clip with different branding picked up at a county fair in rural Arkansas.

This matters because networks matter,and networks do not hold together on their own. The morning keynote at the conference was from the CEO of a large homeless advocacy organization. Sitting in the ballroom of the hotel with others who care deeply about homelessness and housing, it was clear just how fragile this moment is for the most vulnerable among us.  The word “souvenir” comes from the French “to remember.” There are no doubt criticisms to be made of adding more “stuff” to the world that will end up in a drawer or a landfill. But, it is also nice “to remember” that we’re not alone when someone pulls out a bag from a conference that you both attended about a topic you both care about deeply.