Page 13 - Prathima Volume 12

Factors of Women's Low Participation in Politics in Sri Lankan by D.H.S.A.
Somarathna points out that, although gender equality is established by the
Constitution of Sri Lanka, compared to male participation in parliamentary and local
governance, female participation shows a significantly low value. Using a timeline of
Sri Lanka's parliamentary system over the period 1931-2010 divided into three eras
concerning the Donoughmore Commission of 1931, the Salisbury Commission of
1947, and the Republic Constitution of 1972. The author also explains the path the Sri
Lankan women have taken in their political participation, using secondary data, to
establish that, even when they received parliamentary positions, women receive less
crucial ministries based on their gender issues that pose social, cultural, economic,
political and psychological obstacles to prevent them from taking part in high risk
political ventures. Apart from above, he provides an in-depth explanation to the
methods which can be employed in improving the quality of women's participation in
the politics in Sri Lanka.

As the main objective of social sciences is to explain the social realities as they are, the
southern theory is identified as a key perspective useful in that regard. In his paper
“Epistemological Euro-Centrism in Sociological Theory and Epistemological
Biases in the Southern Theory”, Samitha Udayanga has criticized the Europian bias
in sociological theories. He explains how southern theory has created a new reading in
sociological theories as a perspective. This article discusses Euro-centrism in
sociological theory from Aristotle and Plato, to Durkheim and Weber, from Habermas
and Bauman to Latour, and how it spread in the East through colonization and
annihilated Eastern epistemological traditions and foregrounds the arguments
postulated by southern theorists on the importance of studying transformations in
human behaviour resulted in by globalization and colonization which are not
observable in Europe, and the inappropriateness of studying cultural diffusion under
globalization through a single epistemological framework. Thus he highlights the
need of emphasizing global south as a special zone in the sociological tradition using
studies by theoreticians such as Ashis Nandy, Santos, Sujatha Patel and Gananath
Obeyesekere who contributed to the development of the southern theory.

“Review of Postcolonial Scholarship: Conducting Research on Culture and
Society” by Pathmanesan Sanmugeswaran demonstrates how classical
anthropological theories are critically re-examined under the influence of new
thoughts with attention to the way in which convergences and divergences were
created in theories and methods. He further illustrates the importance of postcolonial,
postmodern and feminist theories and their contribution to research on contemporary
culture, especially in the study of multi-cultural societies. Moreover, he
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