Final answer:
Culture includes a group's shared beliefs, practices, values, and symbols that shape their worldview and social interactions, encompassing everything from laws and values to rituals and customs. It is passed down through generations and covers various realms like religion, economics, and politics. Cultures offer a broad ideology or worldview that informs members' understanding of the world and their role in it.
Step-by-step explanation:
Culture is a set of beliefs, practices, and symbols that are learned and shared among the members of a society. It encompasses a group's way of life, from daily interactions to significant life events, forming an integrated whole that binds individuals and shapes their worldview and lifeways. Culture includes the laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all of the cultural rules that govern social life. This cultural system is dynamic, collectively shared, and passed down from generation to generation, influencing how individuals rationalize and interpret the complexities of their lives.
Moreover, culture represents a very broad ideology that shapes how the members of a society view the world and their place in it, spanning across religion, economics, and politics. A worldview offers an overarching model for the purpose and process of social life, providing insights into 'how the world works'. For instance, some West African cultures are influenced by a worldview that focuses on the accumulation and distribution of material goods in extended families and communities. Whether spiritual, religious or secular, every individual's belief system shapes their interpretation of life and reality, contributing to the larger cultural aggregate.