ABSTRACT
Bruce Braun, Arun Agrawal, and Tania Murray Li all use Foucault’s ideas about how subjects are created to explore their ethnographies. Braun, a geographer, analyzes the historical impact of the science of geology, a nice addition to Foucault’s own work on the subject creation engendered by the advent of the human sciences. Agrawal and Li examine conservation projects that were actually designed to create conservation subjects, with some success in Agrawal’s case study, but a fairly dramatic failure in Li’s. Braun argues that knowledge, specifically the knowledge produced by the Geological Survey of Canada, creates subjects. Agrawal argues that practices are the key. Li argues that subject creation is a fragile process that will not necessarily succeed.
