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.
2024 Presidential Election: Two-Cornered, Three-Way Fight
Pradeep Peiris
After weeks of hullabaloo, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) has nominated Namal Rajapaksa as their candidate for...
South Asia in the New Global Debt Crisis – A Call for Collective Solutions
Amali Wedagedara
Debt payments of developing countries exceed their national revenue. According to a new report, Resolving The Worst...
Child Marriages in Muslim Families in Batticaloa and Ampara Hasanah Cegu, Ermiza Tegal, and Nadia Ismail
Child marriages occur in all communities in Sri Lanka, and teenage pregnancies are a concern nationwide. Unlike the...
Mary and Manju Emmanuel, Sarala (Director). 2021-2024. 19 mins and 24 mins respectively Pasan Jayasinghe
Pasan Jayasinghe
Contemporary social conversations about trans people often do not actually involve trans people. Instead, they are...
Sri Lanka’s Pre-Presidential Election Politics: Uncertainty or Turmoil?
Jayadeva Uyangoda
The coming few months have the potential to produce major political changes in Sri Lanka. The presidential election is...
Anatomy of a Protest and Aragalaya Cinema
Hiranyada Dewasiri
The 2022 people’s uprising and occupation movement in Sri Lanka, widely known as the Aragalaya, was heavily documented...
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.