ABSTRACT
It is a Wednesday afternoon in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. Crowds of people negotiate their way through the narrow walkways of the city’s main market – dubbed one of its best attractions. Residents, tourists, shoppers and traders are forced into tight spaces and intimate proximity. Market traders call to passers-by. Prices are haggled and information is exchanged in multiple languages against a backdrop of low-level chatter. Along with their economic significance, it is this form of sociality and casual exchange that has made the urban marketplace a significant site of encounter and academic inquiry. In recognizing how they bring strangers together, along with differences of class, religion, ethnicity and culture, they have become commonplace sites for the study of urban diversity. Whilst the engagement facilitated between people can be as little as a quick glance or as much as a conversation (Watson 2009: 1581), such spaces are thought to have the capacity to shape how we view those around us and thus to shape our behaviour (Wood and Landry 2008). The key question for urban scholars is how.
