Hospitality*: Are We Really That Nice?

“Orang Indonesia itu ramah, sopan, dan gemar menolong sesama”

(Indonesians are nice, courteous, and helpful)

At the age of 6, I was taught that it was a custom for Indonesians to act warm and nice at each other. “Hospitality is our specialty and uniqueness as Indonesians”, as my 1st elementary grade teacher would say, “We are nice to each other. We greet others warmly. We help those in need. We say thank you to other people.”

As if it was a mutual agreement among all elementary teachers in Indonesia (or probably it was a coincidence that I met people whose teachers taught same things like my teacher did), all the people I asked confirmed that at least there was one teacher or parent saying that Indonesians appreciate hospitality more than any other society.

As Durkheim had mentioned, since society could not exist without a minimal agreement on rights and wrongs, Indonesian society has this collective agreement on how to act ‘right’ towards other people, which is ‘to act nice’.

It means that, from the perspective of sociology, hospitality can be seen as a cultural norm or value that people learned from their predecessor (teachers or parents) through language and communication.
With all the dos and don’ts about hospitality that we have learned, there shouldn’t be any problems about our actions and attitudes regarding hospitality. If there was any competition regarding hospitality, Indonesians should have won easily, since (positive) hospitality is a part of our culture.

Amazingly, we are not that nice.

A study being done by Reader’s Digest showed that the courtesy** level for Indonesian people living in Jakarta was placed on the 29th rank out of 35.
This study measures the courtesy level of respondents living in the big cities worldwide through 3 (three) behavioral test
1. A test that would asses whether one would hold back the door to be opened for other people coming after.
2. A test that would asses whether one would help other people whose papers were scattered on the street.
3. A test that would asses whether a seller would say “thank you” after having a transaction with the buyer.
On the first test, 70% percent of the respondents let the door slammed on the face of the people coming after them, while for the second test, only 20% of respondents who would help others whose papers were scattered on the street. Quite a relief, Indonesian sellers in Jakarta scored 80% for thanking their customers after transactions were made.

Responding to this study, some people said that the study took wrong place to be studied since Jakarta people were more ‘westerned’ than other places in Jakarta. Therefore, the result was bad of since Jakarta ‘westerned’ people are more individualistic compared to people living in other location***. The researchers should take Yogyakarta, Bali, Medan or Bandung as the location of the research.
From the sociological point of view, there might be a normative inconsistencies regarding hospitality in Indonesia. Even though all of us would agree that Indonesians were (supposed to be) nice, there had been a major violation towards hospitality culture based on the study.

The main reason why normative inconsistencies might occur is, people are expected to have the normative permission to save their own lives, even if it means to violate another norm.

In this case, since the place of the study was located in Sudirman offices area, where busy business people are coming in and out, Indonesian people might be more comfortable to let others to open the door or gather their scattered papers by themselves since it would be a ‘a waste of time’ to stop by and do courtesy things to them in need. In other words, those business people were practicing ‘saving their own lives’ actions and violating the norm of hospitality.
It may sound like an excuse, since as for me, if I was faced on the same situation (even though I was not busy), I would just slammed the door behind me and refused to help stranger with his/her scattered papers.


* Hospitality is known as the act of generously providing care and kindness to whomever is in need.

**courtesy, is a part of hospitality.

***A weak opinion, since the first 5 places where the citizens are classified as the most courteous people on earth are New York, Zurich, Swiss and Toronto, Canada, which most, if not all, of the people are western-minded. It is surprising since many people would think that people coming from Western countries are individualistic.