Kinship Diagram

With the kingship diagram, I am focusing on my matrilineal descent. Kingship is a word use by anthropologists to describe certain family relationships; while a kingship diagram is basically a family tree. Fictive kin members bring character and different cultural beliefs into the family. Even though they are not part of the immediate family, they are still part of the family in relation; therefore they still represent the family and are included in all family activities. Sometimes it is good to have fictive kin members because they can help solve family arguments by seeing the views from a semi-etic perspective. With the six different kinship systems, my family closely represents the Eskimo system. My family represents the Eskimo system of living because we are a close working family. In an Eskimo or Inuit system both the father side and the mother side have equal importance. In my family that is also true. However, in most Taiwanese families, the father side of the family is often the focus instead of the matrilineal descent. This cultural act is because often in the Taiwanese culture children take the last names of the father and are of patrilocal residence therefore special attentions are made to the patrilineal descent.

From my mother's side, the relationships are endogamous, with the exception of one of my aunt (my moms younger sister). The beliefs of the newer generations have change tremendously, but there are still not a lot of exogamous relationships. My aunt had the only exogamous relationship that I know of. She married an American, but because of cultural differences and the lack of understanding, the relationship ended with a divorce. Another reason why my aunt's exogamous relationship did not work out was because they had a language problem. Not all words in English can be translated into Chinese with the outcome of the same expression, and vise versa. My cousins ended up be in the custody of my aunt and the seldom visits from my "American