ABSTRACT
Considering calls for new critiques in revitalising development studies, this chapter works from a perspective of bio-power to consider bodies as “inscription surfaces” within processes of perpetuity-aimed adaptation for capital. It does so by assessing governmental rationalities of ‘Human Capital’ aims by the World Bank. These forward health and education outcomes that align with idealised future worker productivity in aiming to mould social and individual bodies. In exploring these policy-embedded and practice-informing rationalities that target a diverse pool of humans, the imperialising tendencies of global governance are not only apparent, but important to unpack. As such, viewing such texts as modalities exerted from power via use of discourse, this chapter approaches embedded implications. Considering set aims for governing material realities and exploring embodied resistance as a motif to bridge with diverse valuations of human life in contemporary development scholarship, it also hopes to suggest ideas into our common but differentiated futures.
