Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
trusteeship (Cowen and Shenton, 1995). Trusteeship can be defined as
the holding of property on behalf of another person or group, with the
belief that the latter will better be able to look after it themselves at
some time in the future. At this stage there was little recognition that
many traditional societies might, in fact, have been content with the
way of life they already led.
The Origins of Development in
the Enlightenment
The origins of modern development, however, undoubtedly lay in an
earlier period, specifically with the rise of rationalism and humanism
that was held to have occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centu-
ries. During this period, the simple definition of development as change
became transformed into the idea of more directed and logical forms of
evolution. Collectively, the period when these changes took place is
referred to as the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment generally refers to a period of European intellectual
history that continued through most of the eighteenth century (Power,
2003). In broad terms, Enlightenment thinking stressed the belief that
science and rational thinking could progress human groups from barbari-
anism to civilization. It was the period during which it came to be increas-
ingly believed that by applying rational, scientific thought to the world,
change would become more ordered, predictable and meaningful.
The new approach challenged the power of the clergy and largely
represented the rise of a secular (that is a non-religious) intelligentsia.
The threads that made up Enlightenment thinking included the pri-
macy of reason/rationalism; the belief in empiricism (gaining knowl-
edge through observation); the concept of universal science and reason;
the idea of orderly progress; the championing of new freedoms; the ethic
of secularism; and the notion that all human beings are essentially the
same (Hall and Gieben, 1992; Power, 2003).
Those who did not conform to such views were regarded as 'tradi-
tional' and 'backward'. As an example of this, the indigenous Aborigines
in Australia were denied any rights to the land they occupied by the
invading British in 1788, because they did not organize and farm in
what was seen as a systematic, rational Western manner. It was at this
point that the whole idea of development became directly associated
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