Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with many more of the everyday and local nuances that arise in the cross-cultural landscape. It provides how culturally relevant, nonnormative, and fluid cross-cultural research findings, in addition to rigorous methodology, also require rigorous emotional and intellectual commitments from the research teams and participants. The book describes the negotiation of intercultural communication and the development of intercultural knowledge and skills. It highlights the complexity of cross-cultural narrative research and helps the reader to reflect on unknown, evolving, and invisible aspects of the researchers and participants. The book illustrates with honesty and transparency the ways that well-intentioned values, even when they are well-established, can be challenging and complicated when implemented where power differentials exist due to broader features of the sociocultural context.