Thesis Facts

This document is a doctoral thesis. It is in beta. No warranties implied or expressed. For the time being it is publically available, until such time as it has been superceded by more stable versions. After that time it will become a dusty artifact of a real library (MIT) and available only by request. Get it while you can.

Reading this document.

This document has not been tested on all platforms. It requires a Style-sheet enabled browser (Internet Explorer 4.0 and higher, or Netscape Navigator 4.0 and higher). Without it the text will appear unformatted, though hopefully not unreadable. The structure of this text is explained below, and a complete table of contents can be reached from any section by clicking on the words "Site Map." Please mail any or all bugs, aesthetic insupportabilities or general criticisms to info@kelty.org.

Printing this document.

The easiest way to print this document is directly from your Browser. Each Chapter is separate, and can be printed to maintain the on-screen formatting. For those of you in proprietary worlds whose on-screen reading habits or computer expertise tend towards the impatient there are three (very large!) possibilities:

1. Word98 (1.3 MB) (created on macintosh, but presumably good on windows, but I sure won't make any promises).
2. RTF (2.5 MB) (again, this is MS RTF, so no promises).
3. PDF (1.2 MB, in four parts) (Adobe Exchange 3.0 created this, and it tests fine with Acrobat 3.0 and 4.0 on Mac 8.5 and Windows 98).

About the video.

On several pages (listed below) there are demonstration videos. Viewing these clips requires the Apple Quicktime software and plug-in (available at www.apple.com/quicktime). These videos range in size from 1 MB to 5 MB, so downloading may take longer depending on your connection. On some of the pages, there are more than one video, and they will begin to play as soon as they download. To prevent this from happening, you can change the preferences in Quicktime to tell it not to "Play movies automatically," or you can simply press stop on the video controllers to stop the video from playing.

Pages with video: http://web.mit.edu/ckelty/www/thesis/introductions/polyunsaturated/A.Amicas.html
http://web.mit.edu/ckelty/www/thesis/transcript/sean399.html
http://web.mit.edu/ckelty/www/thesis/transcript/janmoe1098.html
http://web.mit.edu/ckelty/www/thesis/transcript/Adrian1198.html

The design of this thesis

The data structure of this dissertation uses the Nutrition Facts Label as its constraint: There is Fat, Protein, Carbohydrates, and some Vitamins and Minerals.

Introductions are Fat, and as you know, there are different kinds of Fat: Begin with the Saturated Introduction (this is the worst kind of Fat for you). After that comes the Monounsaturated introduction: an engagement with some social and political theory and the question of language. Following that comes the Polyunsaturated introduction: the ethnographic section, containing details of the fieldsite essential to an understanding of the rest of the thesis.

Next comes Protein, which is good for you, but only if you convert it into muscle. This section is titled Scale and Convention, and the contents and reasoning behind the flow of the 19 chapters of this section is detailed below.

Carbohydrates are for energy, and so I have provided transcripts of some of the interviews that are cited in the text. In some cases, there are video clips of these interviews, which are kind of like eating a whole bunch of bagels. If you are on the Zone Diet, you can skip this section.

Finally there are trace elements of Vitamins and Minerals in the Appendix: bibliographic references, various documents that are cited in the text, acknowledgments, an abstract, a list of acronyms.

Detailed descriptions of each of these sections are provided below, followed by a List of Ingredients (a Site Map). This dissertation is low in cholestorol. Comments or Questions? Call 617-367-6743.

Last Modified 11-Sep-99 9:01 PM ckelty@mit.edu

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