From Stereotype to Cross Cultural Adaptation: Assimilation

Manggarai Students in Malang

Frederik Masri Gasa

, Radityo Widiatmojo

, Asih Zunaidah

and Nisrin Husna

Communication Science Program, Bina Nusantara Institute of Creative Technology Malang, Indonesia 65126

Communication Science Program, Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang, Indonesia 65126

Public Relation Program, Bina Nusantara Institute of Creative Technology Malang, Indonesia 65126

Keywords: Cross-cultural Adaptation, Stereotypes, Community Culture

Abstract: Cross-cultural adaptation is a long process of adjustment to gain comfort when in a new and diverse

environment. The students from Manggarai – Flores (Province of East Nusa Tenggara) residing in Malang

have different identity characteristics, and this affects how they interact and adapt to local residents.

Communication which is built between these students and the local residents can’t be understood without

learning the basic steps in cross-cultural adaptation process. This research uses qualitative research method

with interpretive paradigm intended to gain deep understanding from Manggarai student's point of view in

their adaptation with the local community in Malang. This research ultimately aims to contribute to the study

of intercultural communication in Indonesia, especially to understand and deepen the communication between

community cultures from outside the region and the local communities.

1 INTRODUCTION

Malang is well known as an education city in

Indonesia. The growth of the number of students in

Malang on average increases about 5-10 percent

annually. The students come from various cities in

Indonesia and this makes this city a ‘meeting point’

of many different cultures. Malang becomes an

educational destination for the people of Indonesia,

including the people of Manggarai, Flores, East Nusa

Tenggara.

Cultural differences require Manggarai students

to adapt to Javanese culture; the local culture of

Malang people. The imperative to adapt to local

culture encouraged Manggarai students to seek out

strategies to be accepted and to blend in with the local

communities. The process of adaptation faced

obstacles when there was a conflict among fellow

Manggarai students that led to the death of one of

Manggarai students on November 14, 2015. This

conflict triggered stereotyping by the local

communities particularly to Manggarai students, and

to East Indonesian students in general.

2 STEREOTYPES

Before entering the adaptation process, it is good to

ask why people need to adapt in a new environment.

The answer can be explained by looking deeply at the

locals. In particular environment, individuals live and

gather in generations. At the time, collectivism was

strongly built and embedded with the local values.

They made it, they used it, and they believed in their

own system. When someone enters that system, he/

she is carrying his/her own cultural identity and also

his/her own system. To distinguish the new person in

their environment, the locals use a label namely ‘a

stranger’ for most of the time.

For instance, when an American comes to

Tabanan Village at Bali, the locals immediately

assume that the person is a stranger. The physical

appearance and language are surely different because

a human being was born with his/her own cultural

identity. Moreover, humans tend to be different based

on how they were raised in a particular environment.

This fact generates familiarity and similarity in a

specific cultural environment. Samovar, Porter and

McDaniel explained when someone tackled with an

absence of familiarity or similarity, they often resort

to stereotypes. Because we meet so many strangers

Gasa, F., Widiatmojo, R., Zunaidah, A. and Husna, N.

From Stereotype to Cross Cultural Adaptation: Assimilation Manggarai Students in Malang.

DOI: 10.5220/0010008100002917

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Social Sciences, Laws, Arts and Humanities (BINUS-JIC 2018), pages 365-369

ISBN: 978-989-758-515-9

365

and are often confronted with uncommon

circumstances, stereotyping is a common happening.

Thus, stereotyping can be a natural way of dealing

with the unknown, but problems frequently arise from

a failure to recognize negative stereotypes (Samovar,

Porter, McDaniel, & Roy, 2013).

For example, the people of Surabaya (East Java)

tend to talk loudly and use a lot of obscene words.

When a Surabayan comes to Solo in Central Java, a

problem will appear. Failure in recognizing the

Surabayan culture made Solonese assume that

Surabayan were so rude. In this example, the

Solonese behave to avowal, which Litllejohn explains

as a personal articulation of one’s views about group

identity. To achieve avowal, people need an action on

it and it called stereotype (Littlejohn & Fross, 2009).

However, Psychologists Abbate, Boca, and

Bocchiaro (2004) offer a more formal definition

about stereotype:

“A stereotype is a cognitive structure containing

the perceiver’s knowledge, beliefs, and expectancies

about some human social groups.” The reason for the

pervasive nature of stereotypes is that human beings

have a psychological need to categorize and classify.

The world is too big, too complex, and too dynamic

to comprehend in all its detail. Hence, you tend to

classify and pigeonhole. The main problem is not in

the pigeonholing or categorizing, but rather “the

difficulty lies with the overgeneralization and the

often negative evaluations (attitudes and prejudices)

that are directed toward members of the categories.”

This explanation fits with Indonesian condition.

In a multicultural city like Malang, many people

could be strangers if they move to other city. Once

they enter a new environment, the action of

stereotyping by the locals will occur. Indonesia is too

big to become a single category of culture. In fact,

overgeneralization often addresses spesific ethnic

group, such as Maduranese, Bugis, Sumatranese,

Papuanese, Flores also Manggaraian, with a negative

stereotype. To undo this stereotype, Martin and

Nakayama (2010) argued that you have to be very

vigilant and do something that is not “natural”—to be

very conscious of how to see and categorize people.

To do so, the locals and the stranger must be in one

line of process, which is adaptation.

3 CROSS-CULTURAL

ADAPTATION

Among theoretical frameworks to answer adaptation

process, Kim offers step-by-step adaptation on his

theory, The Cross-Cultural-Adaptation. Kim

explained that the first period of adaptation is called

Cultural Adaptation, where individuals struggle to

adapt in their own ways, try to decode and encode

every communication aspect surrounding the

environment. This process is called enculturation.

Kim (2005) believes that enculturation is the process

of communication and interaction in cultural

environment in continuous time to fit in with the

locals who share a similar image of reality and self.

When individuals enter a new culture, they feel

like a stranger in many ways. This shows the lack of

familiarity and understanding about the locals. One

way to decrease it is tempting enculturation. Through

the time, the level of understanding will elaborate

familiarity in the new culture. Not all of the local

values are acceptable by strangers. Kim argued that

this situation generates “crises” which various

behavior and mentality are brought into awareness

and turn into a question. Conflict will arise, and

strangers start to learn the new cultural system. The

process of learning new culture is the most important

aspect in acculturation. Intentionally or accidentally,

strangers need to obtain and to be influenced by new

information as a self-image.

When a new lesson learned, strangers actually

unlearned some of the old culture that they had

acquired. This shifting of culture is the essence of

deculturation. In order to become acceptable in the

new culture means that strangers somehow must shift

the old culture, and mix them with the new culture.

Strangers do not have the capacity to make

fundamental changes in the new environment.

However, strangers have a hidden power to force

some of the locals to adapt with them.

As the combination of acculturation and

deculturation continues through good

communication, strangers are profound to a new role.

Strangers confirm the local values through their

attitude and social behavior. The ultimate goal of this

theoretical framework is toward assimilation. Kim

argued that assimilation is "a state of maximum

possible convergence of strangers’ internal and

external conditions to those of the natives” (Kim,

2005).

Research on intercultural believes that Cross-

Cultural-Adaptation and Communication play

important roles in lives. Schartner and Young (2013)

find out the effect of Cross-Cultural-Adaptation on

680 post graduate student at Newcastle University

UK in 2013. The finding provided a better result of

adaptation and academic achievement on students

studying Cross-Cultural-Communication (CCC)

compared to the students that do not attend CCC

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class. The relationship among key terms associated

with Cross-Cultural-Adaptation is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Relationship Among Key Terms Associated with

Cross-Cultural-Adaptation (Kim, 2005)

4 METHODOLOGY

This research used the interpretive paradigm. For

interpretive researchers, the goal of social research is

to develop an understanding of social life and

discover how people construct meaning in natural

settings (Neuman, 2014). The interpretive paradigm

is concerned with understanding the world as it is

from subjective experiences of individuals.

Interpretive research does not predefine dependent

and independent variables, but focuses on the full

complexity of human sense making as the situation

emerges (Kaplan & Maxwell, 1994).

The approach used to build this research is a

qualitative approach. This approach allows us to

examine in detail, through the use of specific research

methods (Hennink, Hutter, & Bailey, 2011). Case

study is used as a research strategy, where the things

examined in the case study include individuals,

actions and interactions, behavioral artifacts, setting

and events or specific incidents (Punch, 1998). The

case study design used in this study is single case

study and single level analysis where the case taken

is only one case, while the unit of analysis is the

process of adaptation of Manggarai students with the

community of Malang.

The sampling technique conducted in this

research is purposive sampling, which means the

researcher chooses the individual or location to be

examined based on a specific purpose. The

researcher chose 6 Manggarai students as the

informants because they were able to represent

Manggarai students in Malang and they were also

active in some Manggarai communities in Malang.

By in-depth interview, researchers interpret the data

based on Kim's Theory framework.

5 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

On the enculturation process, there were similar

patterns on each informant. They found a struggling

condition when meeting the locals in the University

or around the neighborhood. One of the informants,

Anastasia, stated that she was being threatened as a

stranger in her campus at the first time. "There were

some unfriendly face when I introduced myself," said

Anastasia. This situation at the moment led to the

difficulties to adapt with the locals. Emiliana

Wilminse just become silent. "The very first step of

my new life in collage was struggling to adapt and

blend in the new culture. I was at a cold condition, I

became quite." Atanasius Cahyadi even took massive

time to decode and encode the local culture. "It took

me quite long time to freely communicate with the

other students, especially the locals." To reduce the

worrying of adaptation, they did the same pattern,

which were looking for other Manggarai students and

started to make friends with the locals. This step is

crucial and becomes the gate for the next period.

On one hand, the informant did the acculturation

process by learning the local culture, like Maria

Melania did. "Over the time, I learn their culture and

their characters in common senses." While Anastasia

did very well effort by telling a great narration to the

local. Anastasia said, "Just be active to change

people’s mind about NTT." Atanasius Cahyadi did a

different way. "Non-formal occasion, such as Ngopi

(having a cup of coffee with classmate) brings me a

new perception, and I try not to differentiate my

classmates from other students. Then I join

Manggarai community in Malang. It is a semi-formal

organization. It occasionally holds a situational

program for us." The informants also tried to learn to

control their voice volume and intonation so it will

not disturb the neighbors. It gave a huge advantage to

adapt with the locals in Malang.

The acculturation process faced such a big

obstacle when the conflict among fellow Manggarai

students occured and led to the death of one of

Manggarai students. A negative stereotype emerges

against them. Atanasius states, "After that accident,

one specific person show an unfriendly behavior to

me." However, the negative stereotype is not a

generalization of Manggaraian. Researchers found

that the female informants were just fine after the

conflict. Emiliana Wilminse argue, "My interaction

with locals was just fine when that fight occured."

After the conflict, each informant enters the

shifting process. The negative stereotype about

Manggarai students disappear smoothly. Atanasius

confirm, "I felt that the environment here really

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367

appreciates the plurality and I realize that by

respecting the rules made by the owner of boarding

house and local people, conflict will never occur."

Emiliana did a self-reflection on deculturation

process. Emiliana said, "I try to understand the

character, I don’t force people to make a friends with

me. Rethink about what is right and reflect what is

wrong." While Anastasia Patrin tried to get closer to

the locals. "If the locals look unhappy with me, I just

choose to be quite and make no comment. If a local

tries to make a distance, then I come forward to say

Hello," said Anastasius. From the time period of

enculturation to deculturation, researchers found that

those process need a long time. Based on in-depth

interview with each informant, the adaptation needs

one until two years.

The final stage is assimilation, which is the

blending of Manggaraian with locals. Anastasia

becomes a story teller in his community. "By asking

and telling a story, I believe people will appreciate

each other. That is the beauty of our diversity," argued

Anastasia. Researchers profoundly find a great tool to

accelerate an assimilation, which is language. Malang

language is unique, because locals say words

reversely (i.e. Boso Walikan – Reversed language).

Atanasius learned the diverse culture through

language. "The local custom and interaction were

easy when I learn the local language," said Atanasius.

Emiliana does the same pattern by learning the local

language to blend with the locals.

The acculturation process experienced by the six

informants is a long process. The environment of

residence and campus became one of the important

factors in the process. The informants are in an

environment and a campus which tend to be

heterogeneous or plural. It helps them to learn to

adapt to the local culture, from the language to the

local customs.

In addition to residential and campus

environments, communities or organizations are also

another important factor during the acculturation

process. Communities or organizations, both in local

area and in campus, help informants to develop

insights and perspectives on things including how to

appreciate differences. Differences of opinion and

ethnic backgrounds they encountered in communities

or organizations did not make them introverted. But

with differences, they were increasingly helped to

adapt and appreciate different cultures.

6 CONCLUSION

The adaptation conducted by Manggarai students in

Malang aims at being accepted by the environment

and the local community. The different cultures

between Manggarai and Javanese culture requires

these students to learn how to adapt; what strategies

and steps they should take.

The concept of Cross-Cultural-Adaptation

developed by Kim helps us to experience how

communication processes are built between two or

more parties of different cultural backgrounds. Cross-

cultural adaptation process passes through four

important stages where each stage can take a long

time and even when a conflict occurs, the adaptation

process will not work properly and acculturation will

take a very long time

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Researchers realized that the completion of this

research certainly cannot be separated from the

involvement and support of many parties. We respect

and thanks to informants and their community for

giving us more space to join and take part in many

discussions. It is such an honor to share experiences

to improve the image of Manggarai people in Malang,

as well as in other areas of Java.

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