ABSTRACT
Intercultural mediation is a shared vision conceived in different ways by many different academic disciplines and fields of practice at the same time. Precisely these diverse and various spheres of interest give rise to a multi-faceted and dazzling concept. This introduction will provide a literature review to compare respective concepts in the disciplines of intercultural communication, conflict resolution, and cultural anthropology, as well as in foreign language didactics and translation studies. Interdisciplinary parallels emerge on this basis, and therefore it becomes plausible that the idea of intercultural mediation circulates between the disciplines. However, at the same time, questions may arise about limitations and undiscovered non-fits. This review also explores how the idea of intercultural mediation depends on different paradigms in social theory, how it changes with paradigm shifts, and how it also returns stimuli to social theory.
