Interpretations
Some sociologists, for example, take the view that every society is defined in terms of a "shared way of life"; that is, in terms of certain very broadly-definable features (a system of language, for example) to which all members of a particular culture subscribe. This type of interpretation stresses the way people within a culture share certain values and beliefs and, by so doing, define themselves in cultural terms.
In addition, this interpretation of culture places a greater emphasis on large-scale group behaviour and prefers to emphasise the general cultural features of a society, as opposed to the specific cultural differences that may exist between smaller groups in society. An example here, perhaps, might be the idea of "Nationality" as a defining cultural characteristic of everyone born into a particular society.
Other sociologists, however, place greater emphasis on the idea that a culture consists of the shared meanings about the nature of the world that people hold. While there may well be generally-held beliefs about the nature of things, the argument here is that the most important aspect of culture to study is that produced within much smaller groups within a society (for example, the cultural life that exists within a school or workplace). Rather than talk about culture in terms of "society as a whole", therefore, such sociologists prefer to look at the basic cultural processes (such as the use of symbols) that people develop in order to make everyday life tolerable and understandable.
The difference between the two views outlined above is one of interpretation and emphasis rather than fundamental disagreement. We could, for example, characterise the second view as being more concerned with an analysis of relatively small-scale sub-cultural development within a general culture, while the former is more-concerned with analysis of large-scale cultural behaviour, within which smaller sub-cultural groups exist.