The Panty Question in Yamal: Sawing, Trading, Discussing

Since 1990s the collection of panty (reindeer velvet antlers) have become one of the important part of the economy of the tundra peoples. The panty trade had formed the whole social network between reindeer herders and “merchants” — the collectors of panty connecting a reindeer herder with the global market. After the outbreak of anthrax in 2016 in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the discussion of the problems of overgrazing and the lack of reindeer pastures have intensified. Some of the scholars claim that the steep rise of the Yamal reindeer herds in the last decades is closely related with the so-called “panty reindeer herding” (allegedly more profitably than the meat-oriented herding but treating the pastures more extensively because of the increasing of the number of the unslaughtered animals) and such a view have provoked the huge discussion. The article presents the different views of the polemicists and analyzes them. To understand the whole mechanism of the panty business the authors during the fieldwork at Yamal in 2015–2018 have studied its various stages on the level herder — “merchant”: the choice of animals and ways of sawing antlers, the seasonal detour of reindeer herders camps by panty collectors, the practices of exchanging commodity for supplies and cash, the share of sales of panty in the structure of income of the tundra family, the transportation of panty