ABSTRACT
The “usual suspects” in transcultural studies have come to dominate both scholarly and popular approaches to cultural interactions. Easily understandable and applicable, for instance due to the handy compartmentalization of culture by dimensions, the findings by Geert Hofstede and others have profited from wide dissemination in management courses and “how to” handbooks that help practitioners maneuver foreign contexts. In a sense, these traditional approaches to culture contacts have become short-cuts that let us place seemingly alien practices in the either/or shelves of dichotomous theories, for instance by identifying a country as either “masculine” or “feminine” and thus allowing a quick comparison to our native context as well as to other experiences. While these theories may permit a first impression and a rough overview, their many shortcomings, as outlined in Chapter 1, mandate that those seriously in search for understanding cultural interactions go beyond traditional frameworks. In light of the BRIC constellations, it is particularly problematic that the commonly applied theories all stem from Western scholarly settings, rather than from the countries we look at.
