Sami El Amari

Sami El Amari is a Research Fellow at LISST (Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Solidarités, Sociétés, Territoires) at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, where he completed his PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnology in January 2023. His scholarly work bridges anthropology, sociology, and political economy to examine capitalist development in post-colonial contexts.

His research focuses on:

• Social Anthropology and Ethnology
• Capitalism Studies in Global South contexts
• Class Analysis and Bourgeoisie Formation
• Community-Based Economic Arrangements
• Post-Colonial Economic Relations

Dr. El Amari's groundbreaking work examines the unique economic and social arrangements among business elites on Madagascar's east coast. Through extensive ethnographic research, he documents how these 'bosses' navigate the tensions between community obligations and capitalist imperatives, developing theoretical concepts like 'informal subsumption of labor under capital' and 'dotted bourgeoisie' to explain their distinctive economic practices.

His publications reveal a consistent analytical focus on how Madagascar's business elites maintain community arrangements inherited from colonial history while simultaneously seeking emancipation from them. This creates what he terms a 'transcommunity network' that is affected by seasonal economic variations and centered on producing a specific image of 'dangerous classes' against which they must defend themselves.

Dr. El Amari has presented his research at major academic forums including the 9th Congress of the French Sociological Association in Lille (2021), where he contributed two significant papers that have shaped contemporary discussions on capitalism in non-Western contexts.

His work provides crucial insights into how local business elites operate within global capitalist structures while maintaining distinctive community-based arrangements, offering a nuanced understanding of class formation and economic practices in post-colonial settings.