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.
Nirmani Liyanage (2.2.1988-12.11.2022)
Nihal Perera
“To understand the community I am researching, i.e., the injustice and inequality its members are facing on a daily...
Terror as Stability
B. Skanthakumar
“… stability, no less than revolution, may have its own kind of Terror”[i] Ranil Wickremesinghe has apparently peaked...
Resisting the Liberal Left’s Framing of the Economic Alternative
Shiran Illanperuma
In a recent intervention for Polity, Devaka Gunawardena argues that Sri Lanka’s Old Left failed to theorise the...
Structural Adjustment of Women’s Labour in Agriculture in Sri Lanka
Buddhima Padmasiri
Women’s empowerment through employment is not a new focus for international financial institutions and development...
Meaning and Critique in Women’s Narratives of Care and Work
Nadia Augustyniak
Arguments about the economic benefits of women’s labour participation go hand in hand with assumptions about the...
Statement by academics on dealing with Sri Lankan debt, January 2023
Sri Lanka, along with many other low- and middle-income countries, has experienced a series of financial shocks due to...
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.