Chapter Twenty Five

Chapter 25 — A Relational Anthropologist’s Guide to Navigating Cultural Theory

Using the Four F’s: Friend, Foe, Food, Fornicate

The canon is not a list of names.
It is a relational field.

And every theorist in that field can be understood through four relational categories — the Four F’s — a playful but surprisingly accurate anthropological heuristic:

Friend — Who serves understanding, accompaniment, relational truth?
Foe — Who reinforces transactionality, hierarchy, control?
Food — Who nourishes the field, brings something generative to the table?
Fornicate — Who incites us, inspires us, sparks desire to create or transform?

Most theorists are not one thing.
They are mixtures — kin in one register, obstacle in another.

This chapter reads the canon through that relational lens.

THE EARLY EVOLUTIONISTS

Tylor & Morgan

Friend: No
Foe: Absolutely — architects of hierarchy
Food: They brought the table itself (the discipline), but stocked it with colonial assumptions
Fornicate: No — unless you’re aroused by Victorian taxonomy

Relational verdict:
They are the origin of the wound. Necessary to understand, but not kin.

THE BOASIANS

Franz Boas

Friend: Yes — he breaks the hierarchy
Foe: Occasionally — still extractive, still paternalistic
Food: He nourishes the field with cultural relativism
Fornicate: Yes — his courage, his refusal, his mentorship

Relational verdict:
Boas is the flawed ancestor who opened the door. Papa Franz felt like home because he moved toward relation, even imperfectly.

Ruth Benedict

Friend: Yes — pattern, culture, ethos
Foe: Sometimes — exoticization
Food: Her writing nourishes; she brings beauty
Fornicate: Yes — her prose seduces

Relational verdict:
Aesthetic kin, partial ancestor.

Margaret Mead

Friend: Yes — accessible, public-facing, relational
Foe: Sometimes — oversimplification
Food: She fed the public imagination
Fornicate: Yes — her boldness inspires

Relational verdict:
A bridge figure. Imperfect, but deeply relational in spirit.

FUNCTIONALISM & ITS SHADOWS

Bronisław Malinowski

Friend: No — his diaries reveal contempt
Foe: Yes — intimacy without respect
Food: He brought participant observation
Fornicate: No — unless you’re into methodological betrayal

Relational verdict:
Tool without kinship. We side-eye him forever.

A.R. Radcliffe-Brown

Friend: No — people become functions
Foe: Yes — control, structure, system
Food: He brought clarity, but not nourishment
Fornicate: No — sterile

Relational verdict:
Useful obstacle.

E.E. Evans-Pritchard

Friend: Sometimes — he tries to understand logic from within
Foe: Still colonial
Food: He brings intellectual respect
Fornicate: Occasionally — flashes of brilliance

Relational verdict:
A hinge figure. Not kin, but not enemy.

STRUCTURE, SYMBOL, MEANING

Claude Lévi-Strauss

Friend: No — relation becomes code
Foe: Yes — abstraction over life
Food: He brought mythic architecture
Fornicate: Yes — the elegance of his patterns

Relational verdict:
A seductive obstacle.

Clifford Geertz

Friend: Yes — thick description is relational
Foe: Sometimes — culture as text can flatten
Food: He nourishes with detail
Fornicate: Yes — his writing incites interpretation

Relational verdict:
A major ally.

Victor Turner

Friend: Deeply — liminality, communitas, ritual
Foe: Rarely
Food: He feeds the field with threshold theory
Fornicate: Absolutely — he inspires ritualists everywhere

Relational verdict:
One of the truest ancestors of Relational Anthropology.

Marshall Sahlins

Friend: Yes — meaning over materialism
Foe: Occasionally
Food: He brings historical depth
Fornicate: Yes — his arguments spark fire

Relational verdict:
A strong bridge.

Mary Douglas

Friend: Sometimes — boundaries as social meaning
Foe: Sometimes — rigid categories
Food: She brings conceptual nourishment
Fornicate: Yes — her clarity is intoxicating

Relational verdict:
A necessary thinker for relational boundary work.

Durkheim & Mauss

Friend: Yes — the social as sacred, the gift as relation
Foe: Durkheim can be rigid
Food: They feed the entire discipline
Fornicate: Yes — their ideas still spark desire

Relational verdict:
Foundational ancestors.

POWER, PRACTICE, GLOBALITY

Eric Wolf

Friend: Yes — restores history and power
Foe: No
Food: He brings nourishment through connection
Fornicate: Yes — his clarity is thrilling

Relational verdict:
A crucial ally.

Pierre Bourdieu

Friend: Yes — habitus is relational
Foe: Yes — can be deterministic
Food: He feeds us language for power
Fornicate: Yes — his concepts seduce

Relational verdict:
Both. A powerful tool and a frustrating partner.

Ulf Hannerz

Friend: Yes — cultural flows
Foe: Rarely
Food: He brings global nourishment
Fornicate: Sometimes

Relational verdict:
A helpful cartographer of relational networks.

CRITICAL, FEMINIST, POSTMODERN

James Clifford

Friend: Yes — partial truths
Foe: Yes — can get stuck in critique
Food: He brings reflexivity
Fornicate: Occasionally

Relational verdict:
A mirror, not a mentor.

Donna Haraway

Friend: Absolutely — situated knowledges
Foe: No
Food: She nourishes the field with ethics
Fornicate: Yes — endlessly inspiring

Relational verdict:
A major ancestor of TechKnowledgy.

EMBODIED, MEDICAL, INTIMATE

Paul Farmer

Friend: Yes — accompaniment
Foe: Never
Food: He nourishes through justice
Fornicate: Yes — he inspires action

Relational verdict:
One of the clearest embodiments of relational anthropology in practice.

Emily Martin

Friend: Yes — metaphors in science
Foe: No
Food: She brings embodied insight
Fornicate: Yes — her work sparks curiosity

Relational verdict:
A key ally.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes

Friend: Yes — witnessing
Foe: Sometimes — confrontational
Food: She brings ethical fire
Fornicate: Yes — her courage incites

Relational verdict:
A fierce kin.

Tim Ingold

Friend: Yes — correspondence, dwelling
Foe: No
Food: He nourishes with relational ontology
Fornicate: Yes — his ideas seduce the imagination

Relational verdict:
A sibling to Relational Anthropology.

What the Four F’s Reveal

When you read the canon this way, something becomes clear:

Anthropology has always been circling relationality.
It just kept choosing control at the last moment.

The Four F’s show:

who moved toward relation
who moved toward domination
who fed the field
who sparked desire
who held the door open
who slammed it shut

And most importantly:

They show how close we were — always — to becoming a relational discipline.

Foundational Theorists & Their Key Texts

(Citations included for each cluster)

Tylor & Morgan

Edward B. Tylor — Primitive Culture (1871)
Lewis Henry Morgan — Ancient Society (1877)

Boas & The Boasians

Franz Boas — The Mind of Primitive Man (1911)
Ruth Benedict — Patterns of Culture (1934)
Margaret Mead — Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)

Functionalists & Structural Functionalists

Bronisław Malinowski — Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922)
A.R. Radcliffe‑Brown — Structure and Function in Primitive Society (1952)
E.E. Evans‑Pritchard — The Nuer (1940)

Structuralists & Symbolic Anthropologists

Claude Lévi‑Strauss — The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949), Mythologiques series
Clifford Geertz — The Interpretation of Cultures (1973)
Victor Turner — The Ritual Process (1969)
Mary Douglas — Purity and Danger (1966)