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.
Why 2024 Will Not Be 2015 Redux
Ramindu Perera
Amidst the woes of a deepening economic crisis and the disastrous effect of International Monetary Fund-dictated...
Fault Lines in Indian Agriculture: Solidarities and Contradictions in Southern Haryana
Srishti Yadav
November 2023 marks three years of the historic farmers’ protests in India that captured the imagination of people in...
Reflections on Critical Agrarian Studies in Sri Lanka
Urs Geiser
In this essay, my aim is to reflect on the situation in Sri Lanka’s agrarian sphere, through the gaze of ‘critical...
Gaza: Into the Abyss
Devaka Gunawardena
Gaza and the wider world are heading into an abyss. With the announcement and preparation of Israel’s invasion of Gaza...
A Hundred Years of Pauline and C. R. (Dick) Hensman
Rohini Hensman
Dick and Pauline Hensman, Mount Lavinia, 1982The birth anniversaries of Pauline Hensman (née Swan) and Dick Hensman...
In 2024’s elections, lessons from 2015
Devaka Gunawardena
Ahead of the 2015 Presidential Elections that were held on 8 January, Mahinda Rajapaksa seemed unlikely to be...
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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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.











