Building Defensive Ideological Walls against Globalization: The Male Elite and Imposition of the Veil in Post-Revolution Iran

The Iranian Revolution brought to the fore the disenfranchised and discontented classes that in most part belonged to Iran’s pre-capitalist and mercantilist economy and succeeded in dominating post-revolution era politics—the bazaar merchants, the clergy and the new urban proletariat and intelligentsia who migrated from provincial towns and villages to major urban enclaves and were instrumental in overthrowing the Western-dependent Shah and the ruling elite. In this paper I will make the case that the above-mentioned groups inherited an economy that was dependent on global capitalism, yet their modus operandi was based on a pre-capitalist and mercantilist political culture and their populist anti-colonial objectives were understandably influenced by religion. Since the government’s anti-colonial struggle for achieving economic independence has proven to be arduous if not impossible; I consider the ruling elite’s patriarchal approach to women’s rights as a logical progression of this reality and probably one of their few remaining political/ideological weapons to resist the totalizing forces of globalization