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.
Safety is Not a Wall: Beyond Protection from Domestic Violence
Prasanna Pitigala Liyanage
Call her N.The night she left, she packed her phone, her NIC, and a small bag.A friend waited in a trishaw.At the...
“There is nothing inherently liberatory in the imagination, but it must be made so”
Vajra Chandrasekera
From the Editors: Our warm congratulations to Vajra Chandrasekera, whose writing we have been pleased to feature, on...
Transgender Sex Work in Sri Lanka: The Politics of Nachchi Sex Workers. Kaushalya Ariyarathne. Palgrave Macmillan, 2025.
F. Zahrah Rizwan
Groundbreaking is the word that echoes through Kaushalya Ariyarathne’s book, Transgender Sex Work in Sri Lanka: The...
End the Microfinance Menace! No to the new Bill!
Feminist Collective for Economic Justice
The National People’s Party (NPP) marked the completion of its first year in government in September 2025. Sadly, the...
Reflecting Back and Looking Forward: 20 years since the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act
Thahira Cader & Raaya Gomez
IntroductionOctober 3rd this year marks twenty years since the passing of the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act, No....
‘Dead Catting’: Manufacturing Moral Panic in Sri Lanka
Ruben Thurairajah
In Colombo Fort, tourists stroll past decaying colonial buildings, unaware that the air is thick with invented fear. A...
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.