Keshavarzian 225economic and leisurely lives do not map onto or reenforce one another as
seamlessly as they did in earlier decades.
us the ability of the bazaar’s locale to generate a collective sense of Th
place has diminished. More generally the fragmented and vertical hierar-
chies of the new system foster hidden relations and secrets. Competition
among bazaaris has become more unrestrained; emerging alliances with
external actors undermines the bazaaris’ sense that their fate is inextri-
cably tied to the bazaar. Foucault has argued that space is a reflection of
the process of power; and the transfiguration of the relational aspects of
the Tehran bazaar’s space reflects the new logic of state power that has
reworked the capillaries of power and publicity in the bazaar.
No place for mobilization under the Islamic Republic^61
Not surprisingly, the bazaar’s spatial transformations have undermined
bazaaris’ capacity to sustain social mobilization. Since the initial revo-
lutionary era, antistate mobilization by bazaaris has been rare, and
the mobilization that has occurred has not been national or sustained.
Clashes between merchants have erupted from time to time, and have
sometimes turned violent.^62 In Isfahan, for example, the bazaar closed
down for a day to protest “unfair” and increasing taxes.^63 Protests have
also at times been triggered by local political disputes.^64 But these and
other instances of public dissent were short-lived, limited to a single city,
and very inrequent. Moreover, on the rare occasions when closures and f
demonstrations have taken place in the last few years, the action was lim-
ited to a select few guilds. Notably protests seem to be common to sectors
such as the carpet and jewelry bazaars, which, due to their trade in goods
that are characteristic of nonstandard commodities, have relatively dense
and long-term social relations.^65 For instance, in October 1994 more than
300 jewelers in the Tehran bazaar went on strike for two days to protest
the hundred-fold increase in taxes on gold.^66 A news report claimed that
the protest was the first to be organized by a guild since the Revolution.
In July 1996, in response to allegedly exorbitant taxes, hand-woven car-
pet dealers in the Tehran bazaar went on strike and gathered in the Azeri
mosque.^67 The Azari mosque, officially called the Shaykh Abd al-Hosayn