Keshavarzian 207of specific commodities.^7 The morphology of the bazaar enabled bazaaris
to develop autonomous commercial networks which were as essential for
economic exchange as they were well worn channels for communication,
mobilizing resources, and developing of repertoires of collective action
that are vital for social mobilization. As I will argue, the spatial dimen-
sions of the bazaar were the organizing principles of its interpersonal rela-
tions, and are essential to understanding the extent to which it has been a
public sphere over the last half century.
f it is correct that the bazaar’s place is politically positioned, I
we should expect that with the Islamic Revolution its social space was
reshioned as the government’s shadow has traced new areas of dark and fa
light. I present evidence suggesting that new state policies have indeed
reconfigured the Tehran bazaar’s place and networks in ways that have
simultaneously transformed the locales and locations of commerce and
consequently reduced the bazaar’s publicness and political efficacy. Thus,
the articulation of politics in the bazaar is more contingent than implied
by the rather permanent notion of physical space or highly structural
notions of social groups and classes.
Degrees and contingencies of publicness
The discussion of place, interpersonal relations, and politics recalls the
now classic writings of Arendt and Habermas on the public sphere.^8
“Public sphere” refers to the discursive space where informed private citi-
zens literally and communicatively meet to engage in rational-critical dis-
course about the common good. For these authors and those who have
engaged with them in subsequent decades,^9 the public sphere is an empir-
ical heuristic and normative ideal through which political action (praxis)
and participatory democracy are made feasible and meaningful. Despite
Iran’s lack of the constitutional and legal frameworks which enabled the
construction, vitality, and effectiveness of public spheres in certain parts
of Europe since the nineteenth century, the concept of public sphere does
foreground the contingent intersection of socioeconomic and political
registers in the case of the bazaar. Public spheres, like bazaars, are effects
of everyday forms of interpersonal interaction.