Final answer:
Culture encompasses more than written rules and norms; it includes a society's shared practices, values, beliefs, and behaviors, both formal and informal. While formal norms like laws are part of culture, unwritten social rules also significantly shape cultural interactions and identities, allowing for continuous cultural change.
Step-by-step explanation:
Culture is often misconstrued as a set of written rules and norms that guide an organization, but this definition is not entirely accurate. While culture does include formal norms such as laws and written rules that are clearly stated and enforced, it is much broader and encompasses shared practices, values, beliefs, and behaviors of a society. These are not always codified in written form but are learned through social interactions and experiences within a society.
For instance, values and beliefs shape how individuals perceive the world and interact with it, such as protecting forests or conserving resources based on cultural beliefs about nature. Additionally, cultural norms also include informal, unwritten rules that govern social interactions, like the appropriate response to a greeting. Thus, while formal norms, such as laws and manuals, are part of a culture, they are not its entirety.
Cultural change is also a key aspect of culture as societies evolve and adapt, allowing for a dynamic interplay between the established norms and the individuals or groups who interact with and may transform these norms. Culture is essentially a complex web of the tangible and intangible that gives a society its identity and influences behavior.