Approaches to “interculturality”, “transculturality” and “culture reflexivity” in self-help literature

Abstract

Intercultural competence which is to be achieved via intercultural trainings has become in-creasingly relevant during the last decades: globalization is one factor to the reason why the necessity to include intercultural trainings in various organizations arose. Consequently, a lot of self-help literature has been published. Nevertheless, those trainings center the approach of interculturality, a concept which focuses on two cultures and thereby opposes ownness and foreignness. To assume that two cultures produce a culture clash is to be discussed critically nowadays: According to Welsch (1999), this approach homogenizes and separates cultures from each other. Instead, Welsch (1999) proposes the concept of transculturality which de-scribes the inner complexity and the enmeshment of various cultures in a more appropriate way. Against this background, this thesis examines the use of the intercultural approach in German self-help literature and in how far a culture reflexive or a transcultural approach is used. By analyzing aims, content and methods within a corpus of three books, it shall be clarified to which extent the authors stick to the paradigm of interculturality. The results show that all three books make use of the concept of interculturality, nevertheless, they do so with different intensity. While one of the analyzed books proposes critical questions regarding the approach, another uses the intercultural approach without doubting its accurateness. Concludingly, the thesis argues for a more culture reflexive approach in future publications of self-help literature as nowadays, we all are cultural hybrids (Vgl. Nazarkiewicz/Krämer 2009, S. 253, translated by the author).