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.
‘When the Devil Drums, We Dance’: Sex Work and Sexual Violence in Wartime Sri Lanka
Radhika Hettiarachchi
In the context of Sri Lanka’s civil war, transactional sex work was a particularly dangerous survival strategy for...
Mountain at a Center of the World: Pilgrimage and Pluralism in Sri Lanka. Alexander McKinley. New York: Columbia University Press, 2024.
Anushka Kahandagamage
Between the lines of this book, the Siripāda mountain emerges not merely as a place, but as a living, breathing...
Editorial: There is great disorder under heaven
Editors
The post-1990 world order—an ensemble of norms, rules, and institutions, informed by economic and political...
The ‘Radical Impulse’ in Music in Pre- and Post-Partition India
Sumangala Damodaran
From its second decade, the 20th century saw the need for a people’s art, a need to represent, unearth, popularise,...
The development of S.B.D. de Silva’s political economy
Shiran Illanperuma
For those who knew him or have read his work, the late S.B.D. de Silva could be considered one of the greatest...
Aid Interrupted: Reverberations in Sri Lanka of USAID’s Dismantling
Sandunlekha Ekanayake
Trump’s ‘America First’ doctrineIn a shocking move, President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ right-wing populism and...
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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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.