Culture is a set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group that encompasses not only art and literature but also lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs.
A distinction may be drawn between material (physical artefacts such as food, clothing, housing, goods, tools, artistic products, etc.), social (language, religion, laws, rules, family structure, labour patterns, folklore, cultural icons, etc.) and subjective (shared knowledge, beliefs, memories, identities, attitudes, values and practices) aspects of culture.
This set of cultural resources is distributed across the entire social group with each individual member appropriating and using only a subset of the cultural resources potentially available to them. This explains the variability within each cultural group and may result in contested or blurred group boundaries.
Under this view, any social group can have a culture and all cultures are dynamic and constantly change over time as a result of internal and external factors. All people belong to multiple groups and their cultures, and participate in different constellations of cultures. Cultural affiliations are also fluid and dynamic, having a strong subjective dimension.