ADAPTING TWO CULTURES (A GLANCE THROUGH THE HOFSTEDE’S CULTURAL DIMENSIONS MODEL)


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In Germany, the number of interracial couples has doubled over the course of two decades. In 2017, 1.5 mln couples lived together, where one of the two ones had foreign citizenship. They make up 7% of all couples living together. In 1996, those were only 3%. Around 1.2 mln of the 1.5 mln interracial couples are married (Statistisches Bundesamt Report, 2018). Being born in Malaysia but grown up from an early age in the interracial family in Germany, one of the co-authors was exposed to two different cultures (ones don’t have a lot in common), thus, the idea that the interracial couple is a good adaptation mechanism was checked out empirically. Despite the apparent rigor and reliability of the empirical method, however, there exist major drawbacks which render it unfeasible to use in cross-cultural communication, external variables introduced by the experimenter, the environment, or the subject material could skew the results. No experiment aims to be completely accurate but through repeated trials it is hoped that a helpful pattern can emerge to be interpreted. “Germans are most comfortable when they can organize and compartmentalize their world into controllable units. Time, therefore, is managed carefully, and calendars, schedules and agendas must be respected.” (Business Culture, 2019). Malaysians’ core values are gentleness, respect, courtesy, modesty, face, filial piety, and diversity. The punctuality is not a big priority in Malaysia (a home to different ethnicities, where a relaxed approach to time is practiced). “Christianity is the dominant religion, with 65 to70 percent of the population identifying themselves as Christian. That number is 29 percent Catholics. Muslims make up 4.4 percent of the population, while 36 percent are unaffiliated or have a religion other than Christianity or Muslim.” (LiveScience, 2018). Over 95% of the German population speaks German but there are other languages (due to the ethnic minorities in Malaysia, Bahasa Malaysia as well as Chinese or Tamil) spoken by a larger number of communities: Turkish, Kurdish, Russian, Greek, Albanian, Polish, etc. (Koh, 2015). Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory (Hofstede, 1991) distinguishes between national cultures but a host society interracial family becomes the integration axis not only for the second generation but also for the spouse.

Keywords: interracial families, integration mechanism, different ethnicities, core values, immigrants

Larissa Talalova 1 , Devi Katharina Werthschulte 2

1 State University of Management (SUM)

Moscow, Russia

e-mail: talalova@gmail.com ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1380-2339

2 Osnabrück University

Osnabrück, Germany

e-mail: devi-katharina@t-online.de ORCID iD: 0000-0001-5981-4509

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