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It is argued that the criticisms of Thomas, Johnson and Riordan (1995) of Durrenberger's 1992 article 'Psychology, Unions, and the Law: Folk Models and the History of Shrimpers' Unions in Mississippi' are misguided. These critics misrepresented facts and offered confusing arguments. For instance, their assertions that shrimp boats were not owned by operators and that Mississippi shrimpers were not independent of processor controls when labor unions were a powerful unifying force are both erroneous.

Many factors determine the decisions and actions of Mississippi shrimpers. What appears to be a typical problem of an open access resource -overexploitation - is not a consequence of shrimpers' decisions. The demands of processors shape the fishing methods and gear of fishermen as well as the number of fishermen. Fishermen sell their catch to processors who offer them access to credit and docking space. Local, state, and national policy affects shrimpers and processors. Such policy may be directed at inappropriate elements of the system if policy makers do not understand how the system works. Because statistical or economic analysis alone may be quite misleading, such understanding requires ethnographic and historical insight. In this paper I examine the relations among indebtedness, dependency, ethnicity, and locale among Mississippi shrimpers in the context of this system.

The skipper effect is the effect of the captain on catch exclusive of boat size, effort, technology, or other external causes. Independent of such an effect there may be an ideology or folk model of a skipper effect. In some fisheries there is both a skipper effect and an ideology of one; in others, neither; in still others, one but not the other. Among Mississippi shrimpers, there is neither a skipper effect nor an ideology of a skipper effect. The lack of a folk model of a skipper effect is related to the relatively great capacity to process shrimp compared to the ability to catch it.

Folk models hold that shrimpers on the Gulf Coast are too psychologically independent to band together for sustained collective action. In Mississippi, unions were ineffective while packers' schooners supplied their own shrimp. When shrimpers began trawling in their own motor boats in the 1930s, they began to control the supply of shrimp and their unions were effective. In the 1950s, when they borrowed heavily to buy gulf boats and processors began importing shrimp, shrimpers again lost control of the supply of shrimp and their unions became ineffective. At the same time, they were outlawed. The lack of unions is not a consequence of shrimper psychology, but of the law and relative control of resources. Key words: maritime anthropology, shrimpers, unions, folk models, US Gulf Coast