| Abstract: | Conclusion The Iranian revolutionary experience reveals not only the social power of tradition, but also the flexible and creative adaptations that a traditionalist movement can make in the face of adversity to protect its core. Khomeini felt no contradiction utilizing the international telephone circuitry, arriving home on a jumbo jet, or talking to his followers through television. All too often tradition is perceived as something static, unflexible and brittle; as something totally opposed to modernity. The Iranian popular mobilization, and indeed ten years of cultural politics inside the Islamic Republic of Iran, has provided a profound challenge to that interpretation. |
