Nomadland,

Paper Essay Project
Paper Project Guidelines

Your book review of the Text, Nomadland, should be sociological in nature. Do not just tell me what the book is about as I already know what the book is about. My intention is to see how well you can think sociologically about the author’s case study. The case study is a work in journalism and is a set of stories about the subjects in the narrative and how they have adapted to a nomadic way of life. There is no sociological theory in the book. Your paper will be an essay on the book. It will be four to five pages typed and double spaced. Place the title of the book at the top of the page in bold and at the left margin. Give the author’s name. When quoting directly from the text give the page number like (p. 5) at the end of the quote. You are to write the review with concepts form the class in mind. For example, the Sociological Imagination can be used to discuss the lives of the people she wrote about in the book. How have larger social forces impacted the lives and choices of the people studied? Social Inequality is a big one. Age is an issue and also the loss of income and homes due to the downturn in the economy. Conflict theory would be interested in how the subjects’ labor has been exploited due to their hard luck during the economic downturn in 2008. Functionalist would be interested in how the subjects play a positive role for the economy as part time, seasonal workers, and Symbolic Interactionism is the main focus of the study (from a sociological point of view, not that of the author of the book) in that the narrative is mainly about the individuals in the study and their stories of survival as nomads in the RV subculture. You also have a lot of examples in terms of Gender issues! Also race, though most of the subculture is made up of white Americans. But why so? Finally there are many examples of institutional discrimination. Also look for examples of prejudice and ideologies about gender and age. End your paper with a self reflection on the significance of the book for the sociological study of part time work and live style and how the book affected your outlook on the future of labor (working people) in the United States. NOTE: Do not try to copy from some other review that is online of the book as I have an app that I use to check for this and students will get a zero on the paper for not writing their paper in their on words.