ABSTRACT
Based on in-depth interviews with members of a small rural community in Uganda, this chapter demonstrates the importance of local community in determining market outcomes. In contrast to the distancing and displacing of costs that are incentivized in the globalized maquila and meatpacking industries, this chapter highlights the potential for just outcomes when a market is socially embedded in an infrastructure of justice that prioritizes community rather than a global commodity-based logic. Economic decision-making, viewed through the lens of the Mirembe Kawomera coffee cooperative and its rural community, encompasses a holistic set of costs and benefits, including less tangible ones such as happiness, peace, and equality. Under these conditions, economic activity and strong community tend to be mutually reinforcing, a powerful argument for a rationality-of-justice approach. This chapter demonstrates that if the goal of economics is to maximize human happiness, then approaches that directly address social justice and community-building rather than utility and income maximization by individual economic actors, might offer more promising and “rational” paths.
