Yogyakarta, 13 March 2020 – Institute of International Studies that belongs to the Department of International Relations, held the Suryakanta event again this year. Suryakanta is a bookclub that supported by IIS to understand the international relations issues through books. The first meeting of Suryakanta in this year was cooperated with International Relations Student Corps (KOMAHI) and discussed about the ‘Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of World Order’ thesis by Samuel P. Huntington. This meeting took place in the room BA-503, in the IIS meeting room to be exact, and was started at 01.15 p.m.
This meeting was divided into two sessions. The first session was reviewing the Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of World Order book and the second session was discussing about the practices and implementations that discussed in the book, especially about the role of identities towards international relations. In the first session, book reviewing process was moderated by Mbak Siti Kurniati Rasad or Mbak Nia as the moderator who was an alumna from American Studies Faculty of Cultural Sciences UGM. In the second session, the discussion was moderated by M. Irsyad Abrar or Mas Abrar, the representative of Intracurricular and Academic Department (INKA) KOMAHI.
The first session was began with an explanation from Mbak Nia, she explained about the outline of Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of World Order; that this book was about the global politics and what is called as civilization approach in global politics. This session was continued with participants reviewing one chapter at a time from the book the Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of World Order. Previously, through a WhatsApp group, the participants had an assignment to read particular chapter to be reviewed by them and the results were presented at this Suryakanta meeting. According to the rules, the participants presented the review and discussed about the chapter that they read. This presentation were delivered sequentially, started with the participant who read chapter one until the participant who read the last chapter, chapter 12.
The review was started by Mbak Arin, the participant who got to read chapter one. Mbak Arin said that this chapter titled The New Era in World Politics still discussing about basic things, including how is politics in the new era also the explanation of what is the ‘new era’ terminology itself. The review then continued to the next participant who got to read chapter two, and so on, until the last chapter. But there were several chapters that have not got reviewed or reviewed by moderator because the participants who got to read those chapters could not present in this Suryakanta meeting. Even so, book review session went well and all the participants were listening all of the discussion thoroughly.
Continued to the second session which was the discussion session with Mas Abrar. Before discussing based on Huntington’s book, Mas Abrar explained about concept of identity in a more general and broad way. Identity simply explained by Mas Abrar as the idea of entity, from both internal, inside of the entity itself, and external. This idea could be very constructive and could be relatively ‘given’, too. Then, Mas Abrar explained the main topic, it was the role of identities in the international studies. In this topic, Mas Abrar saw this topic through three perspectives, there were Katzenstein (1996), Holsti (1970), and Huntington (1993). Every theories were discussed one by one and continued with the case studies.
The second session was ended with two sessions of question and answer. The participants asked enthusiastically and gave their responses about the explanations that were given by Mas Abrar. In the second session of question and answer, there was a participant who responded to Mas Abrar’s previous answer. Mbak Nia, the moderator in the first session, also gave her response to the questions from participants in the second session of question and answer.
There gonna be seven meetings of Suryakanta that will be held once in two weeks. In the every meeting it will discuss about books and going to invite the speakers, like this first meeting of Suryakanta. For those who are interested in attending the next meetings, and want to join into WhatsApp group for the provision of discussion materials, can fill the form on bit.ly/suryakanta2020.