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Horizontal Power, Vertical Weakness: Enhancing the “Circuit of Culture”

Imagined as a way to account for a broader conceptualization of meaning, the “circuit of culture” encourages scholars to consider the contribution of sometimes overlapping cultural processes, such as production, consumption, regulation, representation, and identity. In this article, the author considers the way the circuit prompts him to think “horizontally” in his research. But he argues that the circuit can be augmented and improved by the recognition of deeper, “vertical” dimensions of meaning. For instance, would it be possible to account for the researcher's own cultural processes in her/his reports? What about those of the audience members for these reports? The author presents an example of this approach with the interpretation of a Smokey Bear advertisement. He concludes that such efforts to pull together these elements will be rewarded with more powerful, nuanced statements of the process of meaning.