Polity aims to advance democratic consciousness, gender equality, state reform, and social change in Sri Lanka, while interested in South Asia and the World.
As its predecessor Pravada (1991-2002), Polity is published by the Social Scientists’ Association in Colombo, with critical content on politics, political economy, history, women, ethnicity, sexualities, religion, labour studies, agrarian relations, nationalisms, violence, ecology, and much more.
Reflecting Back and Looking Forward: 20 years since the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act
Thahira Cader & Raaya Gomez
IntroductionOctober 3rd this year marks twenty years since the passing of the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act, No....
‘Dead Catting’: Manufacturing Moral Panic in Sri Lanka
Ruben Thurairajah
In Colombo Fort, tourists stroll past decaying colonial buildings, unaware that the air is thick with invented fear. A...
Family Law and Practice in Sri Lanka: Women’s Declaration
Suriya Women’s Development Centre
The Women’s Declaration on Family Law and Practice was officially submitted to Minister of Women and Child Affairs...
Sinhala Buddhist Nationalism and Political Legitimacy in Contemporary Sri Lanka
Shashik Silva
Cleavage politics has emerged as one of the most defining features of Sri Lanka’s party system and political behaviour...
Man in the Mirror
Ruben Thurairajah
The photograph came first. Ranil Wickremesinghe walks out of the intensive care unit of Colombo’s National Hospital, a...
Chemmani: Where the Soil Speaks, Where Memory Refuses Silence
Sakuna M. Gamage
The wind returns to the streetteeming with life and death. It hesitates a littleas it crosses the bridge. This wind...
Current Issue
Out Now! Vol. 13, No. 1 (2025), LKR800 from the Social Scientists’ Association and LKR1000 from Barefoot and Vijitha Yapa bookshops.
170 pages of analysis, commentary and perspective: the implosion of liberal internationalism; aspirations for, and appraisal of, the NPP government; the long march of the JVP from subversive to sovereign; feminist statements demanding action against misogyny and male violence; the May 2025 local government election and axes of polarisation; US and Lankan narratives on culling USAID; the thriving and prosperous national security state, and its gaze on queers; Richard de Zoysa’s short life, long death, and literary legacy; Asoka Handagama’s Rani and memory against forgetting in struggles against enforced disappearances; avatars of privatisation in higher education; continuities and concerns in AKD’s first budget; anatomization of an economy in permanent crisis; retrieving the political economy of SBD de Silva; an IMF poster-child in the crosshairs of Trump’s tariffs and the Washington Consensus; combating corruption in market mode; caricaturing gay representation in mainstream media; celebrating Bapsi Sidhwa’s itinerary and oeuvre; Indian and Pakistani women speak out against war and hate; the performance of Tamil nationhood in and after war; international law facts and fictions in Filastin; and Iranian voices against Israeli-US warmongering and state repression. Front cover art by Minal Naomi Wickrematunge.
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Archive
Pravada (1991-2002) and Polity (2003-) back issues available here.
Social Scientists’ Association
The Social Scientists’ Association (SSA) was founded in 1977, at a turning point in Sri Lankan politics, economy, and society, marked by among other aspects: the ‘open economy’ market reforms; deepening ethnic conflict; and the growing concentration of executive power. Its initiators were academics from public universities, seeking an autonomous space to grapple with these shifts; and to promote progressive political, economic, and social change.