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.
James Brow, Anuradhapura 1984, and the Question of Agrarian Change in Sri Lanka
Jonathan Spencer
James Brow was a British anthropologist who drifted from the nascent counter-culture of early 1960s London, to the...
Sacrificing Accountability to Save the Official Narrative: The UK’s Legacy Act of 2023 and Parallels in Sri Lanka
Daniel Holder
In September 2023, the UK parliament passed The Northern Ireland Troubles (Reconciliation and Legacy) Act entrenching...
Understanding Fascism: Writings on Caste, Class & The State by K. Balagopal. Curated and Introduced by V. Geetha. Hyderabad: South Side Books, 2023, 241p.
Jairus Banaji
K.Balagopal was a civil rights activist and left-wing intellectual who was mainly active in Andhra Pradesh from the...
Shyam Selvadurai’s Mansions of the Moon: A Lankan Review
Crystal Baines
The question of ‘woman’ in Buddhism has always rested on a paradox. On the one hand is the misogyny couched in the...
“Put people at the centre of plans for socio-economic recovery and advancement”: No to IMF’s cosmetic civil society consultations!
68 Civil Society Organisations and Trade Unions
The IMF team is in Colombo for the Second Review of the ongoing Extended Fund Facility (EFF) loan agreement with Sri...
Two conceptions of Jewish identity
Rohini Hensman
Critics of religion who regard it as illusory and harmful, from Marx and his associates and followers to militant...
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.
Calls
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.