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White Man's Burden Analysis

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Despite the necessity of different states working together in order to make the modern world function, there have been many instances where one country has had almost a totalitarian power over the rest of the world. Wallerstein describes this as a hegemon, and states that these nations, specifically the United States for a period of time, “[dominated] the world economy” and were able to “get their way politically.” Colonialism definitely explains the ways in which hegemony, and the “white race’s superiority” was a prevalent issue at the time, and a great example to show this is the idea of the ‘White Man’s Burden.’ The United States, that was defined as a hegemon, colonized indigenous land and saw it as the white man’s burden to civilize the …show more content…
This creates an obvious loss of identity for the individuals in the society, however this is not only the case for individuals. There are global examples of this as well, for instance the example of the European Union. The European Union is a great example to show the unity of nations and the interrelations between these states that help the European countries come to certain understandings about their political, economic or social well beings. However, countries such as Italy are now not pleased with the Union, where a substantial amount of the nation does not necessarily trust it anymore because they did not get the certain outcomes that they wanted and possibly may have felt like they were losing their own identity as a nation. This is made clear through the argument that many Italians are pushing to move away from the Euro currency, which is something that fundamentally connects the nations within the union, because they believe that it “has destroyed …show more content…
Even through revolutions and protests against the norms that the world system has created and instilled in the modern world, there is still a great sense of urgency and need to come together as communities rather than individuals, and adapt this specific quality, to establish change and bring about legitimate modifications to society. Thus it is clear that one of the most important and predominant phenomenons of the world system theory is the idea of unity and global and social ties, especially in the fast paced modern world that we live in today. All in all, through these ties, the influence that nations have on each other is inescapable, and not necessarily a bad thing and its successes were definitely seen in the past. There is much potential for more positive outcomes than negative, however the mutuality of opinions and equality throughout is extremely important for this to

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