Universalism in geography
Universalism, in human geography, signals the position that ideas of development produced in Western social sciences hold for all times and places. Universalist thinking began in the Age of Enlightenment when philosophers decided on "truths" that could explain occurrences rationally and accurately. Development geography, human geography and other disciplines seek to find and critique universal "truths". Critics suggest that Universalism has created a world knowledge hierarchy placing Western Europe, North America and the rest of the "developed" world at the top, as the centre of knowledge, and placing the rest of the globe below, as ignorant and needing to be educated. The hierarchy reiterates the core-periphery notion, examining it in terms of knowledge differentials across space.
Origins
As intellectuals began to question traditional understandings of the world and think on a global scale, new "truths" were created to help explain the world as placeless, free of cultural specificity, abstract and apolitical. They began to manifest themselves in development policies, political apparatuses, and other institutions. In the late 19th and 20th century, Émile Durkheim wrote that "the truths of science are independent of any local context", echoing the Enlightenment's philosophies and assuming an isotropic globe, thus allowing homogeneity to overtake difference. A sense of security and superiority was wielded as the world was now understood, which allowed for the continued teaching of and reliance upon universal "truths".
One can see how saying that all knowledge is geographically located is widely taken as a way of saying that the knowledge in question is not authentically true at all.
Global diffusion
As universal "truth" claims gained acceptance among Western intellectuals, they began an important transition into the school system. Michel Foucault describes the 17th- and-18th century school systems as being important because of highly complex systems of conditioning. As "truth" claims were taught to children, they became embedded within societal and political apparatuses. Once cemented within such institutions, they were able to flourish and remain.Through the imperialist expansion by the west and the successive colonisation around the globe, supposed universal "truths" began to diffuse across borders, space and place. Once colonies were set up and dominant hegemons were in place the processes of the west began to be the processes of the world and the necessary steps to modernisation.