Family,Networks and Academics

The history of anthropology is a growing field of study within the discipline itself. Our series ‘Key Informants on the History of Anthropology’ is offered as a contribution to the discussion of how anthropology, as it is understood and practised today, evolved and took shape. In this invited article, Larissa Adler Lomnitz reflects on how a cosmopolitan background aroused an interest in her in questions of social identity. Her studies of social networks in urban situations in Latin America are renowned in anthropology. Here she relates how they unfolded—and how they have been intimately connected to her family life.