above it, and he says that civilization and the life of society are governed by the same laws as are seen in organic life. Society is formed by natural selection. Differences among human beings are seen as caused by differences in the level of evolution attained. Haeckel used this idea to argue that some races were inferior and were so because they were closer to the animals (Stein, 1988, 53-57).
The perspective of cultural relativism is the idea that a culture must be evaluated according to its own standards and those standards alone. There are actions that are acceptable in some societies and not in others. The cultural relativism would evaluate practices according to how much they are accepted in a given society and not based on the values of his or her own society. This perspective developed in contrast to the ethnocentric
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