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:
“The Father and His angelic hierarchy
That made the magnitude and glory there
Stood in the circuit of a needle’s eye.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“We are all hostages, and we are all terrorists. This circuit has replaced that other one of masters and slaves, the dominating and the dominated, the exploiters and the exploited.... It is worse than the one it replaces, but at least it liberates us from liberal nostalgia and the ruses of history.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)