Keshavarzian 215Locating the bazaar in the Pahlavi political economy
Up until this point, the discussion of the bazaar has focused on its built
environment and how it generated a sense of place, but place also refers to
how a particular geography is located in relation to other places and socio-
economic and political processes. Just as physical boundaries generated
a place-based bazaari identity by facilitating a web-like set of relations
and effected categorical separation between the bazaar and the rest of the
urban society, the state’s policies and Pahlavi monarchy’s modernist gaze
subordinated the bazaar and its inhabitants to “the modern economy”
while making it a central node in Iran’s petroleum-fueled consumerism.
e “othering” of Th khiyābānῑ by bazaaris is a direct reflection of the
high modernism^30 of the Pahlavi state that sought to abolish the bazaar
by replacing its commercial and economic system with a supposedly dis-
tinct and superior modern economy. State-sponsored and -owned chain
stores, department stores, and banks were supposed to compete with and
replace the bazaar’s commercial and credit functions. A host of policies
were adopted to discriminate against the bazaaris. For instance, state
banks directed credit to allies of the Pahlavi family and away from smaller
commercial figures; and tax laws and commercial regulations were arbi-
trarily applied in ways that did not favor the bazaar community.^31 The
Shah’s rhetoric identified the bazaar as “traditional”—in contradistinction
to “modern,” the principle of public investment and political outreach.
The state systematically discriminated in favor of those who shared the
royal family’s kinship and ideas and against those associated with the old,
traditional, economic world. Not surprisingly, this helped bazaaris to
band together and demarcate a group boundary.^32 Rather than seeking to
co-opt bazaar organizations such as the Chamber of Guilds and Chamber
of Commerce in order to mobilize bazaaris on behalf of the regime, the
Shah only took ad hoc and reactive measures that periodically admon-
ished a group which was nonetheless considered to be anachronistic to
modernization.^33
Despite the Shah’s open hostility towards the bazaari class and their
limited direct access to oil rents (though they could still access this liquid-
ity indirectly), the Tehran bazaar remained commercially pivotal. Thanks
to rapid urbanization and related capital accumulation and monetization