Circuit of Culture

The Circuit of Culture is a theory or framework used in the area of cultural studies. It was devised in 1997 by a group of theorists when studying the Walkman cassette player. The theory suggests that in studying a cultural text or artifact you must look at five aspects: its representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation. Du Gay et al. suggest that "taken together (these 5 points) complete a sort of circuit...through which any analysis of a cultural text...must pass if it is to be adequately studied." Gerard Gogin openly uses this framework in his book Cell Phone Culture: Mobile technology in everyday life in order to fully understand the cell phone as a cultural artifact. His book is split into four parts: production, consumption, regulation, and representation and identity (through looking at mobile convergences).

Famous quotes containing the words circuit of, circuit and/or culture:

    Within the circuit of this plodding life
    There enter moments of an azure hue,
    Untarnished fair as is the violet
    Or anemone, when the spring strews them
    By some meandering rivulet, which make
    The best philosophy untrue that aims
    But to console man for his grievances.
    I have remembered when the winter came,
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Within the circuit of this plodding life
    There enter moments of an azure hue,
    Untarnished fair as is the violet
    Or anemone, when the spring strews them
    By some meandering rivulet, which make
    The best philosophy untrue that aims
    But to console man for his grievances.
    I have remembered when the winter came,
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.
    Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)