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)

    “each new victim treads unfalteringly
    The never altered circuit of his fate,
    Bringing twelve peers as witness
    Both to his starry rise and starry fall.”
    —Robert Graves (1895–1985)

    “The hatred of the youth culture for adult society is not a disinterested judgment but a terror-ridden refusal to be hooked into the, if you will, ecological chain of breathing, growing, and dying. It is the demand, in other words, to remain children.”
    —Midge Decter (b. 1927)