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.
Undermining statutory rape protection in Sri Lanka
Kumudini Samuel and Chulani Kodikara
On 9th February, the government gazetted a Bill to amend Sections 363 and 364 of the Penal Code (Chapter 19) which...
Privatisation from within ‘Free Education’: Tuition Classes in Anuradhapura
Amali Waidyasekera
The school attendance of students facing national level examinations such as Ordinary and Advanced Level, drastically...
Zionism in Crisis after October 7? What Crisis?
Neve Gordon
Editors’ Note: The remarks below by Professor Neve Gordon were made at a teach-in on Gaza at Queen’s University,...
Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942–1962 by Kalyani Ramnath. California: Stanford University Press, 2023, 308p.
Luc Bulten
Kalyani Ramnath’s Boats in a Storm contributes to the ever-growing body of literature using legal archives to help...
On the Edge: University Education in Sri Lanka
Kaushalya Perera
At the COP-28 Climate Change Conference in Dubai in December 2023, Ranil Wickremesinghe announced the establishment of...
Independence Day
Binu Peiris
The Lankan flag sways high and mighty on Galle Face Green,The Lion roars with pride, bowing before Samarakoon’s...
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.