It's All Politics: South Alabama's Seafood Industry

Anthropology, history, and management intersect in this first full-scale exploration of an American fishery. Looking at coastal Alabama's seafood industry in historical perspective, E. Paul Durrenberger traces what he sees as its three phases - regional commerce, industrial canning, and industrial shrimping and freezing. The first, from the date of Alabama's admission to the Union (1819) to 1915, was a period of preservation with ice and distribution by rail; the industrial canning phase lasted from 1915 to 1950; the industrial shrimping phase began in 1950.
Durrenberger draws heavily on newspaper and other published accounts from earlier times and on interviews with shrimping industry workers. He presents the history of each phase, explaining how and why it developed and giving contemporary accounts of fishing and fish processing. He deals with gradual changes in political, economic, and technological systems and discusses household economics, folk models, contemporary realities, policy, and politics. Durrenberger also considers current problems including water pollution, disputes about fishing gear, and regulatory issues.
Through all three periods, he maintains, the "shape of the fishery" has been determined by policies often created by persons not involved in the fishing industry. The fishermen's own observation has been that policy is politically determined, a belief that reflects their own feelings of powerlessness as they explain: "It's all politics!"