CONCLUSIONS
When Foucault sought to understand the change that accumulated throughout the 19th century, he did not primarily consult philosophy, religion, or economics (although he certainly knew those fields). Instead, he studied the emergence of psychology, the changing practices of criminal justice, education, and medicine—in short, the changes in how authoritative professionals dealt with their clients.
What Foucault found was a field of operations in which authority accumulated influence and, over time, progressively learned how to accomplish goals through application of disciplinary relations with subjects (clients, students, draftees, etc.). These changes seemed minor and (at worst) innocuous—in part precisely because they did not reflect the "major debates" heralded by most academics, legislators, and journalists. Nonetheless, the field was changing. Professionals had new knowledge—new understandings of how to do their jobs. Individual subjects had a different sense of themselves (having, for example, learned to act like a patient).