Final answer:
Culture can be defined as the shared practices, values, and beliefs within a group and the unique characteristics that distinguish one group from another, encompassing laws, customs, and habits. It plays a crucial role in how societies adapt and express identity.
Step-by-step explanation:
One way to define a culture is to say that it is a way of describing shared practices, values, and beliefs within one group of people and differentiating characteristics between groups of people. Culture encompasses a group's way of life, including routine interactions and significant aspects of their lives.
Culture is sometimes distinguished from a society, as the latter refers to a community of people who share a culture. Culture is the collective manifestation of the group's ways, evident in their beliefs, laws, customs, and a wide array of habits. It is how they identify themselves, defining their group identity, heritage, traditions, and social rules. This includes material and nonmaterial elements such as language, food preferences, and artifacts, all of which are used by societies to adapt to their environments and express cultural individuality. Sociologically, it's important to recognize cultural relativism in order to understand cultures on their own terms, without the bias of ethnocentrism or xenocentrism.