In this article I see development as a power field made up of many networks and institutions. I present the notion of "consortiation" to explain the articulations among the different actors of the development field. Furthermore, development is approached as an ideology and utopia, a discourse traversed by cultural western categories and linked to the economic expansion of capitalism. The discussion on "developmentalist dramas" allows for the identification of two types of subjects generated by the unequal encounters between local actors and outsiders.
development; power fields; economic expansion