Sociology

Extra Credit Assignment – 25 points (Maximum)
You will need to utilize the scoring rubric as you write your essay to maximize your score. The
essay will need to be at least 5 full pages of text – not including a cover page. You can find the
book through several locations including Amazon (recently purchased for less than $5 including
shipping!!!).
This paper should be an interpretive sociological analysis of the book Ishmael or My Ishmael. It
should be more than a book report and should be written in a scholarly manner. You should
include some of the things you have learned in sociology, particularly theoretical orientations
and concepts. For example, you should be able to apply some sociological theory to the ideas
Daniel Quinn uses in the book. Discuss the Takers and Leavers in terms of conflict theory,
structural functionalism, symbolic interactionism, etc. Who are the Takers and Leavers? What is
meant by the term Mother Culture? How does it operate? Who is Ishmael? What is he trying to
teach and why?
Pick out a portion of the text in Ishmael and expand on it. There is symbolism in the book that
can be tied to notions such as: stratification in terms of class, race, or gender; the sociology of
religion; political sociology; economics; organizations; philosophy; social movements and
collective behavior; or any topic of your choice. The possibilities are wide open and are limited
only by your imagination (within reason, of course). Relate these ideas to various types of
societies — hunter-gatherers, agrarian societies, industrial societies, or post-industrial societies.
But don’t rely on long, extensive quotes as the essence of the paper. Tell me what you’ve
learned from reading the book.
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