in some societies kinship and political relations are organized around membership in corporately organized dwellings rather than around descent groups or lineages, as in the "house of windsor". the concept of a house society was originally proposed by claude lévi-strauss who called them ""sociétés à maison"". the concept has been applied to understand the organization of societies from mesoamerica and the moluccas to north africa and medieval europe. lévi-strauss introduced the concept as an alternative to 'corporate kinship group' among the cognatic kinship groups of the pacific region. the socially significant groupings within these societies have variable membership because kinship is reckoned bilaterally (through both father's and mother's kin) and come together for only short periods. property, genealogy and residence are not the basis for the group's existence.