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.
The Crisis of Neoliberalism and the Progressive Alternative
Devaka Gunawardena
The current crisis in Sri Lanka is not only a political crisis of the regime of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. It is also a...
A History of Unfortunate Circumstances
Hasini A. Haputhanthri
‘A Day in July 2019’ by Rajitha Dissanayake, 2022, Lionel Wendt, Colombo
This play has been long in the making. A string of unfortunate circumstances induced by the pandemic resulted in the...
A Secular Need: Islamic Law and State Governance in Contemporary India. Geoffrey Redding. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020. 240 pp
Reviewed by Farzana Haniffa
Redding’s book lays out the manner in which regardless of the horrendous anti- Muslim violence permitted and often...
Dissident Memory and Democratic Citizenship: Sandya Ekneligoda and Her Struggle for Justice
Chulani Kodikara
Sandya Ekneligoda holding a flame and trident (24 January 2019). (Photo: Nilshan Fernando)Prageeth Ekneligoda,...
Democracy in the Global Interregnum
Devaka Gunawardena
The meaning of democracy is becoming unmoored. Since the end of World War II, the US claimed the banner of democracy,...
Budget 2022: Brace for Austerity
B. Skanthakumar
“… we must at least now, stop, groping in the darkness” ~ Basil Rajapaksa (12 November 2021)Basil Rajapaksa’s maiden...
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.