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

(Paul Du Gay, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Hugh Mackay, and Keith
Negus) when studying the Walkman cassette player (The story of
the Sony Walkman). The theory suggests that in studying a
cultural text or artifact you must look at five aspects: its
representation, identity, production, consumption and
regulation.
The Circuit can be used as a tool of cultural analysis. Culture can
be understood in terms of shared meanings, meanings are in
turn constructed by language and language is able to do this
because it operates as a representational system. Be it the
spoken language or the body language, words, sounds, gestures
or making a face makes any sense to us only when we can make
any meaning of it, when they signify something to us. Thus all
ways of producing and communicating meaning work as language
and are systems of representation. For example-thinking and
feeling can be systems of representation for people sharing the
same culture (as in for a group of people, all of whom perceive
the Dove as a sign of peace), as can be photography.
Thus representation uses signs and symbols to represent
whatever exists in the world in terms of a meaningful idea,
concept or image. We give things meaning by how we
represent them.
This leads us to the question of identity. Identity gives us a
location in the world and presents the link between us and the
society in which we live. For example- our gender identity, our
sexuality, ethnicity, social class to our identity on social
networking sites or our nationality. Identities are essentially
meanings by which we identify or interact with the world, and
these meanings are never fixed but are multiple, culturally
constructed ones that evolve and change. Identity has been
dictated by cultural policy as well as cultural politics, and involves
struggles over meanings, values, forms of subjectivity and
identity.

Production and consumption are related closely as any

production of meaning cannot take place without its consumption.
Meanings are produced and consumed in a culturally homogenous
setting at different cultural moments: "material production,
symbolic production, textual production, and the 'production in
use' of consumption". At the industrial level, production is a
process by which creators of cultural products infuse meaning in
them. Producers encode (a term used by Stuart Hall) dominant
meanings into their cultural products.
Consumption is when the messages are decoded by the
addressees. The act of consumption can become an act of
production both at the everyday level and also at the industrial
level. That is, production is dictated by the act of consumption
because consumers actively create meanings by using cultural
products in their everyday lives.
In postmodern accounts, cultural consumption is seen as being
the very material out of which we construct our identities: we
become what we consume.
Regulation is maintaining a certain order of signifying practices
so that things appear natural or regular. These are conditions
that determine what is acceptable or expected in a culture.
The circuit of culture can be understood only in practice. Studying
a few examples might help us to unpack the idea in a more
organic sense. Let us consider the advertisement of Pepsi. Pepsi is
a cold artificially flavored fizz drink. While advertising for it the
company seldom talks about the product itself. Instead it gets
represented, produced, identified with, consumed and regulated
in various ways across the globe. The product is represented as a
Plastic bottle or a Can with graphics painted over it. Meaning is
produced not by the drink itself but by the bottle or the can with
its graphics (which are often painted with pictures of movies
starts, pop stars etc) customers/ consumers relate to it not for the
product but rather for the meaning / culture produced by the
graphics and hence it is the culture that is consumed rather than
the drink. A sense Regulation and Identity is established as the

company keeps updating the appearance of the product as per

the social, dominant cultural events of the various parts of the
world for example during the 90s the Pepsi in USA was the
symbol of Pop Culture with Michael Jackson imprinted over their
Cans and bottles; In the recent days we often find various movie
stars of Bollywood engaging printed space on the Bottles of Pepsi
cola in India and the same space is taken up by cricketers in
Pakistan. Drinkers often subscribe to the culture promoted by the
drink rather than the drink itself. The circuit of culture completes
and establishes itself through the continuous process of
advertisement and acceptance of such products.
This organized interplay of representation, identity,
production, consumption and regulation. Is a process and the
circuits continue with certain commercially successful products or
socially dominant practices. Weaker and not so successful social
practices often get lost as the circuit breaks down. Most
competing commercial companies attack each other on these
grounds and with such weapons. The fight between Pepsi co and
Coco cola Ltd can be an interesting study to observe on these
equations. The development of the tag line by SPRITE a product of
Coca cola company critiquing this cultural message of PEPSI and
its championing the pop culture was done through the tag line
Bujhae sirf Pyass baki sub bakwas