Abstract
In this paper, through a discussion of an ongoing conflict about regulation of industrial farming in Kentucky, I use Foucault's (1980a, 1980b, 1991) work on governmentality and power and knowledge to analyze how the power relations embedded within processes of governmentality and knowledge production act to marginalize certain groups while producing new regimes of truth and altering subjectivities. My approach differs from that of current academic research and American mass media reporting of the environmental and social impacts of industrial animal agriculture. Academic literature has largely focused upon either the structural changes resulting from the industrialization of agriculture or on the conflict between proponents and opponents of this agricultural form on the local level. Popular media have presented the subject in terms of grassroots struggles to keep industrial farming out of communities or to try to redress social and environmental impacts in communities. Although components of both academic research and mass media reporting are important to my analysis, consideration of the linkages between regimes of truth and the production of certain types of subjectivities provides the basis for an analysis that examines the nexus between macro and micro power relations and situates academic research in the midst of these power relations.
Recommended Citation
Curran, Mary. 2001. "Foucault on the Farm: Producing Swine and Subjects." Journal of Rural Social Sciences, 17(1): Article 2. Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jrss/vol17/iss1/2
Publication Date
12-31-2001
