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.
‘Weeks when decades happen’
B. Skanthakumar
“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen”, as Lenin never actually said. The...
Ranil Wickremesinghe’s election: Results and Prospects for Democratic Revival in Sri Lanka
Devaka Gunawardena
Ranil Wickremesinghe’s ascent to the Executive Presidency represents a system in utter decay. But the unsteady...
The Executive Presidency must go!
The July 9th uprising is a revolutionary moment. The people have spoken, in their millions, in the midst of a grave...
The Solution to the Current Crisis is to Establish a Government Conscious of Workers’ and Farmers’ Rights
Ceylon Plantation Workers’ (‘Red Flag’) Union
[i]The Sri Lankan nation is facing the worst financial, economic, and socio-political crisis in 74 years since...
What Does Increasing the Participation of Women in the Economy Mean?
Devaka Gunawardena
Experts keen to endorse the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) tentative programme for Sri Lanka have attempted to...
Democracy: A Feminist Perspective
V. Geetha
The Rajani Thiranagama Memorial Lecture was delivered in Tamil by V. Geetha on 2 October 2021. When I was invited 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.