Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict. The Kinship of women

The author explores the ways in which Mead´s and Benedict´s professional work grewout of concerns in their own lives -about sexuality and frienship, identity and difference. Lapsey also shows how Mead and Benedict use their anthropological studies to call attention to the cultural foundations of American life, Benedict seeking to make the world more tolerant of deviance and Mead to liberate the individual from the artificial constraints of gender and race.