Getting savages to fight barbarians: development, security and the colonial present

Development today is a radical and intrusive endeavour. Reflecting the interest of homeland security, it is embarked upon transforming societies as a whole within the global borderland. In attempting to secure the future, however, it is reaching backwards to reconnect and rejuvenate earlier colonial modes of governing the world of peoples. This article is a modest attempt to recover part of this genealogy. The concept of biopolitics is introduced and defined in relation to the differences between developed and underdeveloped species-life. In distinction to the life-supporting technologies associated with mass society, development is a biopolitics of population understood as self-reliant in terms of basic economic and welfare needs. The security function of such a biopolitics is that of bettering self-reliance as a means of defending international society against its enemies: it is the art of getting savages to fight barbarians. To give historic depth to this strategization of power, such a manoeuvre is demonstrated in the relationship between colonial Native Administration and insurgent nationalism. It is then used to provide a critical commentary on the interconnection between development and security, in particular, the relationship between sustainable development and internal conflict that shapes current perceptions of global danger. The conclusion briefly considers the cost of this episodic inheritance: a small part of the world's population consumes and lives beyond its means within the fragile equilibrium of mass society while the larger part is allowed to die chasing the mirage of self-reliance. Rather than addressing these divergent life-chances, the securitization of development is further entrenching them.