Paul Alexander, born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1942. Ph.D. from the Australian National University, Canberra. Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney. († 2004)
Fellow (1 September 1989 – 30 June 1990)
My research at NIAS was concerned with two projects. The first, carried out in conjunction with Jennifer Alexander, was an investigation of the history of Kebumen in Central Java. Our most important finding was that the economy of this region at the end of the nineteenth century was not, as is usually assumed, based on subsistence agriculture, but incorporated extensive market relationships.The second project was an analysis of the theoretical basis of economic anthropology with particular reference to apparently universal concepts such as ‘price’ and ‘debt’.