The Flow of Milk: Nursing Prescriptions, Clanship and Locality in Nage Society 1

The Nage people of eastern Indonesia prescribe several plant foods believed to initiate the flow of a new mother's milk. Nage assert that a woman should follow the galactogogue prescribed by her husband's clan, thus connecting the practice with a segmentary social organization in what can be seen as the inverse of Nage plant totemism. A review of actual usage, however, shows that many clans share the same nursing foods and that galactogenic practice reveals regional patterns, thus raising questions of why Nage associate nursing prescriptions with preferentially patrilineal clans rather than locality. It is then shown how statements about the prescriptions form part of a tension between patrifiliation and matrifiliation in this basically ambilineal society. As a way of connecting fathers physically as well as socially to recognized offspring, the analysis further demonstrates how ideas about galactogogues are comparable to usages habitually included under the anthropological rubric of ‘couvade’. It also provides a context in which to consider why ‘participants’ views’ of their society may diverge noticeably from ethnographically observable practice.