Nancy Neiman, "Markets, Community and Just Infrastructures" (Routledge, 2020)

Nov 1, 2025

Nancy Neiman, a Professor at Scripps College and author, dives into the complexities of markets and social justice. She discusses her motivation to empower students and critiques conventional market ideologies. The chat explores how cultural and political infrastructures influence market outcomes, revealing injustices like racism and labor exploitation. Neiman highlights case studies from Cuba and Uganda, emphasizing community values over individual utility. They also examine the implications of globalization on local economies, stressing the need for equitable market design.

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INSIGHT

Rationality Of Justice

Nancy Neiman argues justice can be framed as a form of rational economic choice, not just morality.
She reclaims economic language to show just outcomes are compatible with efficiency and rationality.

ADVICE

Use Econ Language To Advance Justice

Use economic language to argue for justice so arguments reach mainstream policy debates.
Teach students to challenge universalist market assumptions with context-specific evidence.

INSIGHT

Markets Are Not Inherently Moral

Both market-optimists and anti-market critics miss that markets neither guarantee nor preclude justice.
The crucial variable is which ideological and political infrastructures shape incentives inside markets.

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A series of market-related crises over the past two decades – financial, environmental, health, education, poverty – reinvigorated the debate about markets and social justice. Since then, counter-hegemonic movements all over the globe are attempting to redefine markets and the meaning of economic enterprise in people’s daily lives. Assessments of market outcomes tend toward the polemical, with capitalists and socialists, globalization advocates and anti-globalization movements, those on the political right and those on the left, all facing off to argue the benefits or harms brought about by markets. Yet not enough attention has been paid to analyzing the conditions under which markets result in just outcomes.

Markets, Community and Just Infrastructures (Routledge, 2020) explores how culture, politics, and ideology help shape market incentives in an attempt to reclaim the language of economic rationality and the policymaking legitimacy that accompanies it. Through a variety of case studies – labor relations in the U.S. meatpacking industry, the globalization process in Juaìrez, Mexico, financial reform in Cuba, and an interfaith Ugandan coffee cooperative – this book provides a framework for understanding the conditions under which markets promote just or unjust outcomes (e.g., discrimination, income inequality, environmental degradation, or racial justice, human rights, and equitable growth).

This book touches on subject matter as varied as food, religion, banking, and race and gender equality, from a multi-disciplinary perspective. It offers an analysis of markets based on community rather than pure individualism that has the potential to change the way we think about economic rationality. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars in political science, economics, sociology, geography, gender studies, critical race studies, environmental studies, and all those interested in the critique of mainstream economics and neoliberal logic.

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