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 IMF Can’t Save Sri Lanka
Devaka Gunawardena
Among elite policy makers and experts, there is an unshakeable belief that going to the International Monetary Fund...
Sri Lanka’s Left isn’t ‘Taking Democracy Seriously’
Devaka Gunawardena
The Left in Sri Lanka—currently more of an aspirational idea, than an active movement—is once again at the crossroads....
A call to action against the detention of Hejaaz Hizbullah and Ahnaf Jazeem, anti-Muslim violence, and attacks on democracy
Decades of majoritarian politics, and the more recent descent towards authoritarianism and militarisation, have eroded...
In Memoriam: Malathi de Alwis (1963 – 2021) and Qadri Ismail (1961 – 2021)
It is with deep sadness that Polity marks the untimely loss of not one but two great Sri Lankan scholars Malathi de...
Qadri Ismail (1961 – 2021): Abiding, Acknowledging, and Accounting for Intellectual Debts
Andi Schubert
Fuck 2021. Well, that seems like an appropriately Qadri-esque way[i] to open a reflection on his untimely and sudden...
Identity Formation in the Sinhalese Transnational Community in Toronto, Canada
Sankajaya Nanayakkara
The current literature on diaspora makes a break from the old assimilationist and methodologically nationalist...
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.