Markets, Community and Just Infrastructures

The book explores how culture, politics, and ideology shape market incentives to reclaim the language of economic rationality and policymaking legitimacy. It offers a framework for understanding the conditions under which markets promote just or unjust outcomes through case studies of labor relations, globalization, financial reform, and an interfaith Ugandan coffee cooperative.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 180 pages
Publication date: 29 April 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Over the past two decades, a series of market-related crises, including financial, environmental, health, education, and poverty, have reignited the debate about markets and social justice. Since then, counter-hegemonic movements have emerged worldwide, seeking to redefine markets and the meaning of economic enterprise in people's daily lives. Assessments of market outcomes often become polarized, with capitalists, socialists, globalization advocates, and anti-globalization movements engaging in heated arguments about the benefits and harms brought about by markets. However, there has been a lack of attention to analyzing the conditions under which markets result in just outcomes.

In this book, we explore how culture, politics, and ideology shape market incentives in an effort to reclaim the language of economic rationality and the policymaking legitimacy that accompanies it. Through a diverse range of case studies, including labor relations in the U.S. meatpacking industry, the globalization process in Juárez, Mexico, financial reform in Cuba, and an interfaith Ugandan coffee cooperative, we provide a framework for understanding the conditions under which markets promote just or unjust outcomes. These outcomes include discrimination, income inequality, environmental degradation, racial justice, human rights, and equitable growth.

The book adopts a multi-disciplinary approach, touching on subjects as varied as food, religion, banking, and race and gender equality. It offers an analysis of markets based on community rather than pure individualism, which has the potential to transform our understanding of economic rationality.

This book is accessible and compelling, making it suitable for students and scholars in political science, economics, sociology, geography, gender studies, and beyond. By examining the intersection of culture, politics, and ideology in market incentives, it sheds light on the complex dynamics that shape economic outcomes and provides insights into the challenges and opportunities for promoting social justice in the 21st century.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367517809