Reflecting Back and Looking Forward: 20 years since the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act by Thahira Cader & Raaya Gomez

October 3rd this year marks twenty years since the passing of the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act, No. 34 of 2005 (PDVA) in Sri Lanka. In the last two decades, many societal changes have taken place including the growth of new forms…

Polity Volume 13, Issue 1 (2025) Out Now!

Vol. 13, No. 1 (2025), LKR800 from the Social Scientists’ Association and LKR1000 from Barefoot and Vijitha Yapa bookshops.

‘Dead Catting’: Manufacturing Moral Panic in Sri Lanka by Ruben Thurairajah

In Colombo Fort, tourists stroll past decaying colonial buildings, unaware that the air is thick with invented fear. A hotel concierge smiles politely, but in the newspapers, the same streets are said to be under siege…

Family Law and Practice in Sri Lanka: Women’s Declaration by Suriya Women’s Development Centre

This Declaration was prepared through a collective process grounded in survivors’ lived realities and Suriya Women’s Development Centre’s long-standing work in the Eastern Province for over three decades.

Sinhala Buddhist Nationalism and Political Legitimacy in Contemporary Sri Lanka by Shashik Silva

Cleavage politics has emerged as one of the most defining features of Sri Lanka’s party system and political behaviour since independence. Political commentators have identified several key fault lines that shape the country’s electoral landscape: some emphasise caste, religion, and ethnicity as particularly crucial…

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.

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.

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