basic kinship

Kinship is a system of social relationships that are expressed in a biological idiom, using terms like "mother", "son," and so on. It is best visualized as a mass of networks of relatedness, not two of which are identical, that radiate from each individual. Kinship is the basic organizing principle in small-scale societies like those of the Aborigines and provides a model for interpersonal behavior (Tonkinson, 1991:57).

TONKINSON R. 1991. The Mardu Aborigines : Living the Dream in Australiaís Desert (2e.). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Case Studies in cultural Anthropology, [1978].

Here is a link to Minnesota U.'s e-museum kinship page. It is very basic, but it will have the information you need to create your own kinship chart as well as to better understand the kinship systems of the Iban, Malay and chinese on Borneo.
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/kinship/



From the "World Culture Encyclopedia",Copyright © 2008 - Advameg Inc.
Kin Groups and Descent.Iban The fundamental unit of Iban society is the bilik-family, a group of five or six persons defined by kinship and affinity. Depending upon negotiations at a couple's marriage, there is an almost even chance that their children will be born into the family of either the wife or the husband. Iban families are part of a widely ramifying kinship system that developed in response to Iban mobility. The suku juru and kaban belayan correspond to the kindred. The former connotes kin ties originating with one's grandparents and includes persons to the degree of first cousin. The latter is any group of people who share rights of reciprocity with an Iban, and may include nonkin and even non-Iban. More inclusive groups include "the brotherhood" and "food sharers," made up of distant kin who would be invited to one's festivals, or whose festivals an Iban would attend. Attachment is ambilateral and descent is ambilineal. Although some Iban are capable of reconstructing genealogies up to fifteen generations in depth, such reconstructions are selective and illustrate the Iban practice of "genealogizing" so as to establish ancestral ties with strangers.

Kin Groups.Malay The crucial kin distinctions in Malaysian culture are between ethnic groups, which tend to limit intermarriage. Among the majority of Malays, kin groups are more horizontal than vertical, meaning that siblings are more important than ancestors. Those considered Malay make appropriate marriage partners; non-Malays do not. These distinctions are somewhat flexible, however, and those that embrace Islam and follow Malay customs are admitted as potential Malay marriage partners. Greater flexibility in kinship practices also appears among immigrant groups amid the fresh possibilities created by diasporic life. A striking example is the Baba community, Chinese who immigrated prior to British rule and intermarried with locals, developing their own hybrid language and cultural style. These dynamics point to the varied kinship arrangements possible between the different ethnic communities in Malaysian society.

On Chinese Social Structure, from "The Sarawak Chinese", Jonn Chin, 1981, Chpt. 3, Hugh. M. Lewis, :
Perhaps the greatest illusion that a Westerner could entertain with regard to the Chinese is that they are all basically the same. The very basis of ethnic Chinese identity is its cross-cutting nesting of identities within a larger network of social distinctions on the basis of village, clan, kin-group, dialect, class, age, etc. Every Chinese has a place within the vast theater, and every Chinese is supposed to know this place. Indeed, ethnos, or ethnicity, for the ethnic Chinese is the primary organizational principle of their society. Chinese typically draw fine distinctions between other Chinese which are invisible to Non-Chinese eyes.

Intra-ethnic Chinese distinctions have been referred to as subethnic identities based upon local-linguistic-ethnic distinctions. It is highly ascriptive in character, being linked to the strong patrilineal reckoning of Chinese kinship:

Thus, Chinese carry with them everywhere a remarkably complex set of social identities, which the individual cannot discard (He may, however, adopt a fictitious set of Chinese Identities) without ceasing to be Chinese. They cannot discard them, and only within very narrow limits may they alter them. As a further consequence of these facts, a Chinese is a member of a series of nesting and cross-cutting corporate forms wherever he goes. The intersection of local identities in the homeland (province, district, village), partially overlapping with linguistic affiliations, cross-cutting surname identities, superimposed on the local designations in the host country (e.g., state, district, village) give rise to a series of categorical identities, any of which or all of which may be fully incorporated...The possibilities are enormous. Given the ascriptiveness of the categories they are ever-present (Crissman, 1967). The Chinese have ancient patterns of organization suitable to these frames. But note that rank is not ascribed. Among the Chinese, the ideology of mobility, upward and downward, is great: so is the empirical occurrence of such movement (Ho, 1964). The combination of ever-ready organizational receptacles and high aspirations for upward movement (not to mention other factors in favor of the Chinese in Southeast Asia) make them sociologically formidable. Their success in turning these social structural advantages into economic affluence is too well known to require comment.

The complex set of identities, or organizations which may be built upon them, are most visible from the inside. Viewed from the outside, the Chinese look, to most Southeast Asians, as simply Chinese--notoriously persistently Chinese. Not only are they seen as largely undifferentiated, but they are considered to be difficult to assimilate to their host cultures or societies....(D. E. Brown, Principles of Social Structure, 1976: 97)

Chinese successfully exploited this organizational ethos of ethnos in navigating and negotiating several different status-role identities within more than one organizational structure. They thrive on a fundamental status ambiguity, inter-positionality between structures, and a kind of Chameleoness of code-switching, which would befuddle others.

Chinese may well be one big family, but it is a family divided under one roof. The terminological distinctions made in kinship reckoning are fine and of massive detail. It is fitting that both Chinese Heaven and Hell are vast multi-tiered bureaucratic structures occupied by greater and lesser gods. Clan organization and a segmentary lineage structure facilitates mobilization as well as fine-tuning of internal differentiations. Trade associations, secret societies, Kong si's, all cross cut Clan and lineage structures to weave Chinese into a closely knit social cloth.