Shami 21but who also, by virtue of their “foreignness,” do not constitute part of the
national body.
e constitution of the “body politic” in the mid-19th century Th
Ottoman Empire is the main focus of the chapter by Kırlı who emphasizes
that the public sphere emerges at, and through, the intersections of state
and society rather than at their interstices or in the spaces between their
dichotomous domains. He argues that the public sphere is not indepen-
dent of state power but rather an arena of political struggle between the
ruler and the ruled. He demonstrates this by showing how the strategy of
surveillance of conversations in public places such as coffeehouses was in
fact an outcome of a new interest of the Ottoman state in “public opinion”
and thus was also “the moment when subjects were constituted as political
citizens.” Kırlı sees this moment as part and parcel of a new relationship
between state and society, where each becomes more visible to the other.
A sign of the new visibility of the state to what can now be termed its pub-
lic is the increasing accessibility of the sultan to his subjects. Through trips
around the empire and direct engagement with different segments of the
population, the sultan became visible and touchable and sought through
his appearances to bring the people closer to him, to connect the corners
of the empire to the capital and to constitute his subjects as a collective
identity. Not coincidentally, the first Ottoman newspaper is launched at
the same time and publicizes the new activities and image of the ruler
in Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Greek, Armenian, Bulgarian and
French. Surveillence, Kırlı argues, is a central feature of modernity.
eshavarzian uncovers similar points in his examination of the K
relationship between state and market in the Tehran bazaar in post-rev-
olutionary Iran. Examining the common perception in Tehran that the
bazaar exists “in the shadow” of the state, Keshavarzian examines the rela-
tionship between place and collective identity, that of the bazaaris, well
known for their key involvements in the social and revolutionary move-
ments of modern Iran. He stresses that at various points in history, the
bazaar “became a venue to organize and stage dissent—to make it public,”
and he emphasizes the importance of everyday forms of interpersonal
interaction in the formation of publics and public spheres. Keshavarzian
thus argues against excluding the market from the public sphere, stating
that a “narrow understanding of the public sphere and strict dichotomy