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.
Words to Kill a Man, and Free a Man
Kanya D’Almeida
In the early months of 2012, I inherited two troves of literature. I had been hunting for one of them for years; the...
Question – கேள்வி
Cheran Rudhramoorthy (trans. Anushiya Ramaswamy)
The moon, shredded, hangs onthe fence; midnight.Yama’s messengers,who rend lives,tread on the falling leaves. Demons...
The Hidden Politics of Critical Agrarian Studies: A Reply to Urs Geiser
Tom Brass
In a recent contribution to Polity, Urs Geiser (2023) endorsed Critical Agrarian Studies (CAS), as an approach he...
Editorial: Compass on an Old Course?
Editors
One hundred days have passed since Anura Kumara Dissanayake assumed the presidency of Sri Lanka after the 21 September...
Bapsi Sidhwa (1938-2024): Parsi Pakistani writer between Lahore, Partition, and the US
Arif Azad
Bapsi Sidhwa, who died aged 86 in Houston, Texas on 25 December 2024, was Pakistan’s pioneering woman fiction writer...
The NPP Government and Its Democratic Promise: A Review
Jayadeva Uyangoda
How democratic will the National People’s Power (NPP) government be? How faithful will the NPP leaders…
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.











