Safi Shams

Safi Shams, PhD is a social historian who is primarily interested in structural transformation and emergence in the cultural, economic and political arenas. Safi’s work primarily consists of investigating conceptual problems in the historical sciences by relying on detailed case-studies and employing a variety of methods. His most recent work investigates structural transformations that both led to and resulted from the vertical disintegration of major corporations from the 1980s onward into network organizations (e.g. supply chains, franchising networks). Particularly, Safi’s work details how these organizational forms establish “rent systems” that fuel growth by monopoly instead of competitiveness and innovation, and lead to deterioration in working conditions and mobility. His coming projects investigate the same phenomenon in different industries, as well as study the issue of corruption in setting economic policy in the global south. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.