To Marx, the final determining force of change is change in economic relationships and in the material conditions of life. To imagine otherwise is to suppose, with Hegel, that sheer acts of thought and the interplay of ideas can produce history. But a problem is that cultures can be working with very different conceptions of ‘economy’. Studies of the semiotic or communicative dimensions of consumption, of the role of commodities as signs, show wealth and meaning to be integrally interconnected even in western economies (Appadurai 1986; Baudrillard 1975, 1981; Douglas and Isherwood 1981). Sahlins (1976), for instance, argues that a modern economy, ostensibly oriented towards utility and material ‘needs’, is predicated on the existence of a specific scheme of values, and is a system for the production not only of things but of meaning. What I have examined in this book is, in a sense, an example of the converse of this: a society in which certain categories of ideas are treated as economic goods, not only standing in meaningful or logical relations but in relations of value. The nearest equivalent of Avatip cosmology in western society is perhaps not religion but the markets in stocks and shares. What is exchanged in these markets are pure signs or messages, yet these informational transactions yield real profit for successful players and can have major consequences for the distribution of economic and political power.