‘Crop Top Terrorism’ and the Security State in Sri Lanka by Themal Ellawala

The evening of 28 February 2025. A friend and I left his house in Mount Lavinia to board a waiting PickMe three-wheeler. As I stepped out, I noticed a group of five uniformed army and police officers milling about outside a gate close by and immediately sensed there was trouble…

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The ‘Governance of Corruption’ in Sri Lanka – An IMF-NGO-NPP Consensus by B. Skanthakumar

Sri Lanka’s ‘National Anti-Corruption Action Plan (2025-2029)’ was unveiled on 9 April by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD), following approval by the cabinet of ministers on 24 March. The day before its launch, the Proceeds of Crimes Act of 2025 was passed by parliament.  Both actions were taken on the eve of the IMF’s staff-level…

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Horu versus Boru: The politics of the 2025 local government elections in Sri Lanka by Harindra B. Dassanayake and Rajni Gamage

In the 2025 May local government (LG) election, the National People’s Power (NPP) secured a nominal majority in 265 out of 339 LG bodies, electing 3926 members. This would translate into the NPP establishing local bodies under its leadership in more than 150 LGs without having to build coalitions with members from other parties or independent…

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Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. Noura Erakat. Stanford University Press, 2019 by Kiran Grewal

A direct and consequential outcome of the past 19 months of hell experienced by the people of Gaza is that the Palestinian cause is very much back on the international agenda. As we have watched helplessly, a genocide conducted with the tacit or explicit support of the supposed ‘leaders’ of the ‘rules-based order’, many of us have…

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Polity is a magazine which 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 (since 2003), with critical content on politics, political economy, history, women, ethnicity, sexualities, religion, labour studies, agrarian relations, nationalisms, violence, ecology, and much more…

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Current Issue

120 pages of analysis and perspective including: Sri Lanka’s elections, politics, and parties; ‘settler tourism’ in the wake of the Gaza genocide; the spaces of the Aragalaya; child marriages and their miseries in the East; gendering climate-adaptation projects in agriculture; the ‘hidden politics’ of critical agrarian studies; Europe’s far right and its battery of women’s rights; Martin Wickramasinghe and the Sinhala short story; trans-gendered lives amidst war, violence, and displacement; South Asia’s debt crisis is missing collective action; India’s general election; race, class and multiculturalism in Hanif Kureishi’s work; and some favourite books in 2024.

Vol. 12, Issue 2 (December 2024) is now available for LKR 500, from the Social Scientists’ Association and Barefoot bookshop, Colombo 3.

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Calls

20 Years after the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act in Sri Lanka - Call for Articles

Archive

Pravada (1991-2002) and Polity (2003-) back issues available here.

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Social Scientists’ Association

The Social Scientists’ Association (SSA) is an organization working to investigate the way in which social change is contouring the multiple realities faced by communities in Sri Lanka and South Asia. The SSA is deeply committed to promoting a culture of knowledge production that informs and undergirds interventions aimed at achieving social emancipation for marginalized communities.

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