ABSTRACT
This book analyzes the conditions under which markets produce just outcomes, hypothesizing that markets as deeply embedded societal structures will tend to perpetuate underlying social conditions, whether just or unjust. Through a variety of case studies, including the U.S. meatpacking industry and the globalization process in Juárez, Mexico, as examples of unjust infrastructures, and Cuban financial reform and an interfaith Ugandan coffee cooperative as examples of just infrastructures, this book provides a framework for understanding the conditions under which markets promote discrimination, income inequality, environmental degradation, and corruption, or peace and stability, democratic governance, racial justice, and equitable and sustainable growth patterns. This book applies cutting-edge scholarship from environmental science to critical race studies to psychological studies of happiness. It touches on subject matter as varied as food, sport, religion, and small business, but ultimately it offers an understanding of markets based on community that has the potential to change the way we think about economic rationality.
