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…
Reading the General Election 2024
Pasan Jayasinghe and Amali Wedagedara
The National People’s Power (NPP) has made history. With its unprecedented, record-breaking electoral victory at the...
Can the National People’s Power Consolidate its Presidential Victory in the Parliamentary Election?
Pradeep Peiris
The forthcoming parliamentary election on November 14 has attracted significant attention and raised several pertinent...
Soft Authoritarianism, Ethno-Nationalism, and the Backlash Against Women’s Rights in Europe
Shalini Randeria
This talk[1] connects several of my scholarly interests over the last decades in an anthropology of the state, legal...
Settler Tourism and the Threat of Terror
Terror at the CoastlineOn 23 October 2024, the American Embassy in Sri Lanka issued a statement restricting all...
Aragalaya: Struggle for Space and the Spaces of the Struggle
Nihal Perera
The Aragalaya was the largest gathering of people to protest a national government in Sri Lanka. February 2022 saw the...
The Election That Was
B. Skanthakumar
Sri Lanka has a new president. That the incumbent would lose was not in doubt. Who might replace him though was in...
Current Issue
120 pages of analysis and perspective including: Sri Lanka’s elections, politics, and parties; ‘settler tourism’ in the wake of the Gaza genocide; the spaces of the Aragalaya; child marriages and their miseries in the East; gendering climate-adaptation projects in agriculture; the ‘hidden politics’ of critical agrarian studies; Europe’s far right and its battery of women’s rights; Martin Wickramasinghe and the Sinhala short story; trans-gendered lives amidst war, violence, and displacement; South Asia’s debt crisis is missing collective action; India’s general election; race, class and multiculturalism in Hanif Kureishi’s work; and some favourite books in 2024.
Vol. 12, Issue 2 (December 2024) is now available for LKR 500, from the Social Scientists’ Association and Barefoot bookshop, Colombo 3.
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Pravada (1991-2002) and Polity (2003-) back issues available here.
Social Scientists’ Association
The Social Scientists’ Association (SSA) is an organization working to investigate the way in which social change is contouring the multiple realities faced by communities in Sri Lanka and South Asia. The SSA is deeply committed to promoting a culture of knowledge production that informs and undergirds interventions aimed at achieving social emancipation for marginalized communities.