Discuss the impact on British Society of the cultural revolution of Essay

Discuss the impact on British Society of the cultural revolution of the 1960s - Essay Example When social historians refer to "The Sixties", it is rare that they are talking about the decade in its entirety or that decade exclusively. For example, some claim that the sixties began, as a cultural phenomenon, in 1963. A convincing case can be made in support of this. Events such as the assassination of President Kennedy, Martin Luther Kings "Dream Speech", the debut albums of both The Beatles and Bob Dylan immediately appear as cultural turning points. 1963 appears to be the point at which civil rights, counter/youth culture and a new, somewhat alien mentality began to emerge into the mainstream consciousness. In spite of this, Marwick has argued that it is impossible to view the phenomenon in a "hermetically sealed" time frame, and that it truly began in the late fifties, and came to its conclusion in the early seventies. This is compatible with the idea that 1963 was important, indeed Marwick suggests it marks the beginning of the "High Sixties", but we must also acknowledge the gathering momentum of change in the years leading up to this point. Thus, the period of the Long Sixties I will be discussing here refers to 1958-1974. A far more difficult definition comes with the terms "cultural" and "revolution". To further complicate matters, when the two are used together, we can turn them into a proper noun, as with Mao Zedongs Cultural Revolution. Thus, it is important for us to differentiate between that Cultural Revolution, and Cultural Revolution in the far broader terms we are describing here. Was this a collective movement towards a universalistic revolution, or were individuals campaigning for their own singular interests? So what is a revolution, and, perhaps more pertinently, what is a culture? Revolution is a term which appears with startling regularity in world history, and has been applied to many different things. In this case, revolution refers to a paradigm shift