ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on connections between believers as potential customers and the reindeer herders as the producers of this mysterious medicine, who mostly are non-believers. Based on an ethnography and shorter pre- and post-studies, it shows that the growing importance of national and international trade in this commodity affects the way of life of arctic reindeer nomads, and how they react to integration into a network of worldwide exchange. The chapter investigates the history and impact of panty, arguing that herders increasing connection to world market has not resulted in significant marginalization of reindeer herding. Market capitalism practiced according to the rules of tundra nomads, rather than nomadic tundra economy practiced according to the rules of capitalism. Russell argues that people should move subsistence and informal economies from the fringes and portray them instead as belonging to the plural, unruly, and ungovernable set of economic practices that make up capitalism.
