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.
Hypocrisy and Human Rights: Resisting Accountability for Mass Atrocities Kate Cronin-Furman. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022
Reviewed by Radhika Coomaraswamy
When I was given Kate Cronin-Furman’s book Hypocrisy and Human Rights to review, I imagined a different kind of...
Feast, Famine, and Hegemony: On Neoliberalisation and Hindu Nationalism in India
Alf Gunvald Nilsen
Last year, in September 2022, Fortune Magazine reported that India was home to the second richest person in the world....
Test for Real Life? The Gender Transition Process in Sri Lanka
Kaushalya Ariyarathne
The earliest record of sex reassignment surgery in a Sri Lankan public hospital can be traced back to 2003. Even...
May Day Diary 2023
B. Skanthakumar
The sky is clear over Colombo on the morning of 1 May 2023. This is a relief for May Day organisers and participants...
Don’t Use Class as a Weapon to Dismiss Social Struggles
Devaka Gunawardena
We can blame the chaos of the contemporary global moment for many problems. From rising prices, to rearmament and the...
Budget 2023: Heal the Wound or Worsen it?
Dhanusha Gihan Pathirana
This text is adapted from a presentation made at a virtual discussion on the 2023 Budget organised by the...
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.