Thus, in the process of reorganizing nature- by both empowering and disempowering -- "Plants that are valued become 'crops', the species that compete with them are stigmatised as 'pests'. Thus, trees that are valued become 'timber', while species that compete with them become 'trash' trees or 'underbrush'. The same logic applies to fauna. Highly valued animals become 'game' or 'livestock', while those animals that compete with or prey upon them become 'predators' or 'varmints'" (Scott, 1998, p. 13).

Historically, capitalist development--though conventionally understood as a lucrative concept--notoriously became a governing tool for the dominating groups over the dominated. The notion of 'development' was introduced and popularised during the time of colonisation as colonial empires were seeking legitimacy for governance. As British Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald observed in 1940, "If we are not going to do something fairly good for the Colonial Empire, and something which helps them to get proper social services, we shall deserve to lose the colonies and it will only be a matter of time before we get what we deserve" (Cooper, 1997, p. 66-67). After the end of Second World War, the notion of development embraced numerous transformations and meanings; however, the issue of power and governance remained inherent in the discourse of development.

A close examination of capitalist mode of development explicates that its inherent nature is 'accumulation' and 'legitimisation' (Panitch, 1977). It has a tendency of 'ruthless expansion' by constantly revolutionising its mode of production, as without it, capitalism will die. History has witnessed this scenario of expansion again and again. McMichael (2000), for example, elaborates how capitalism created the 'international food regime' by introducing 'Public Law 480 (PL-480) Programme' in the USA to increase consumption of US agricultural commodities in the foreign countries, and thereby change the dietary of the so called Third World population. The centrepiece of this new revolution of capitalism was the US government strategy of 'green power', a strategy of aggressive agro-exporting to consolidate America's role as the 'bread-basket' of the world.

The constant expansion of capitalism in the domain of food and thereby gaining more power is remarkable: it led the so-called Third World population, including Muslim societies, to shift their traditional food to wheat-based diet. Gradually the dietary shifted one step further, as some consumers shifted up the food chain to animal protein (beef, poultry, and pork). The fast-food industries like KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut and many others mushroomed all over the world. Consumption of these new diets, resulted by the capitalist expansion, became identified with 'American Way of Life', and 'modernisation' that captured the imagination of millions of people and went on unchallenged. The same scenario can be found in other sectors of development including fashion and sex industries.

An indispensable part of this capitalist expansion and thereby extension of its power is to constantly create and re-create discursively new domains of thought and categories that subsequently justify governance and interventions. Prominent scholars of post-structuralism and post-modern perspective explain how capitalist power is extended through discursive creation and re-creation of different domains of thought in the discourse of development in order to justify certain actions and interventions.

Escobar (1995), for example, delineates how poverty was 'discovered' and 'problematised', and the 'Third World' was constructed in the discourse of development, and how two-third of the world population was put under a regime of control by discursive practices. 'The poor increasingly appeared as a social problem requiring new ways of intervention in society' (p. 22), and 'the treatment of poverty allowed society to conquer new domains' (p. 23).

The management of poverty then called for intervention in education, health, hygiene, morality, and employment, and the instilment of good habits of association, savings, child rearing and so on. The result was a panoply of interventions that accounted for a domain of knowledge. Not only poverty, but also health, education, hygiene, employment, and poor quality of life in towns and cities were constructed as social problems, requiring extensive knowledge about the population and appropriate modes of social planning (Escobar, 1992).

'The most significant aspect of this phenomenon was the setting into place of apparatuses of knowledge and power that took upon themselves to optimise life by producing it under modern, 'scientific' conditions' (Escobar, 1995:23). By constructing the discourse of 'sustainable development', and problematising 'global survival', capitalism conquered 'nature', in which the exploitation of nature becomes legitimate (Escobar, 1995; Brosius, 1999; McMichael, 2000).

If we delve deeply into this construction and discursive practices, we will find an inherent power relation. The Third World is constructed by distancing it away from the 'civilised' and developed West. Due to the construction of the Third World, the power relation between the agency who constructs, and constructed subjects becomes 'father-child' or "doctor-patient" (Escobar, 1995:159). This is akin to what Edward Said sees in Orientalism:

"[Orientalism] can be discussed and analysed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient -- dealing with it by making statements about it, authorising views of it, describing it, by teaching it, setting it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient… My contention is that without examining Orientalism as a discourse we cannot possibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage -- and even produce -- the Orient politically, sociologically, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post enlightenment period" (1979, p. 3).

Thinking North-South relations, or more precisely, governing one by the other, in terms of representation, as elaborated by Doty (1996), reorients and complicates the way we understand this particular aspect of global politics. North-South relations become more than an area of theory and practice in which various policies have been enacted and theories formulated. "They become a realm of politics wherein the very identities of peoples, states, and regions are constructed through representational practices" (p. 2). Thinking in terms of representational practices calls our attention to an economy of abstract binary oppositions that we routinely draw upon and frame our thinking. Doty reminds:

"Developed/under-developed, 'first world'/'third world', core/periphery, metropolis/satellite, advanced industrialised/less-developed, modern/traditional, and real states/quasi states are just a few that readily come to mind. While there is nothing natural, inevitable, or arguably even useful about these divisions, they remain widely circulated and accepted as legitimate ways to categorise regions and peoples of the world. Thinking in terms of representational practices highlights the arbitrary, constructed, and political nature of these and many other oppositions through which we have come to 'know' the world and its inhabitants and that have enabled and justified certain practices and policies" (1996, p. 2-3).

In this way, capitalist development is constantly expanding its power by constructing new domains of knowledge and policies. The conspicuous process is problematisation: creating knowledge in a very efficient way to represent that domain, institutionalisation: bureaucratization and managerialism, and finally normalisation of power: the effects of power are rationalised, and go on uncontested. This is what Michel Foucault (1979, 1986) discovers and explicates the relation and exercise of power in the modern society. One of the apparent implications of this extension of power is that it 'privilege[s] certain actors, and marginalise[s] others' (Brosius, 1999, p. 38).

As Doty (1996) puts, in case of North-South relations, "one entity has been able to construct 'realities' that were taken seriously and acted upon and the other entity has been denied equal degrees or kinds of agency" (p. 3). The process is going on undefeated and unchallenged. The central character of capitalist development is not merely an economic one, but rather a whole package of power, production, governance and social relations.

Md. Saidul Islam is a PhD candidate in Development Sociology at York University, Canada. He can be reached at: msaidul@gmail.com