Knowra House society House society A social organization in which a corporate house preserves its identity and property through changing combinations of kinship, residence, inheritance, and political ties.
House (social institution) : A durable corporate group that holds property, status, and identity across generations. The house is the enduring group at the center of this form of social organization.
Household : People who live together and organize some everyday activities as a domestic unit. A household is a residential unit, whereas a house can persist beyond co-residence.
Claude Lévi-Strauss : A French anthropologist whose structuralist work reshaped the study of kinship and myth. He formulated the house society concept to account for groups that join diverse social principles.
Potlatch : A ceremonial gathering among Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest involving feasting and the transfer or destruction of wealth. Potlatch ceremonies can publicly display house status and redistribute its wealth.
Lineage : A descent group whose members trace ancestry through a specified line of descent. A house may use lineage claims but also incorporate residence, property, and political ties.
Corporate kin group : A descent-based group that acts collectively and holds rights or obligations in common. Houses can combine kinship with collective ownership and action.
Primogeniture : An inheritance rule that gives precedence to the firstborn child, often the eldest son. Such rules can concentrate property and sustain a house's material continuity.
Kinship : Social relationships recognized through descent, marriage, adoption, or other culturally defined ties. House society developed as an alternative to treating kinship as only descent or marriage.
Kwakwaka'wakw : An Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest with social and ceremonial institutions organized partly through named groups and privileges. Their hereditary privileges and ceremonial identities illustrate house-like continuities.
Clan : A descent group whose members claim descent from a common ancestor, often without a fully documented genealogy. Clan membership alone does not capture a house's corporate property and flexible composition.
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