What If the Problem Is the Question Itself...? We like to sort societies into neat boxes. It’s comforting. It gives us the sense that if we understand the type  of culture we’re dealing with, we’ll know how to behave, how to work, how to communicate. So we draw a line. Here, people are individualistic. Over there, they’re communitarian. End of story. Except it rarely is. This opposition, convenient as it may be, rests on a quiet assumption: that these words have a clear, stab

You can have precisely the same CV, the same years of study, the same sleepless nights… and then discover, after moving to another country, that you’ve gone from “outstanding profile” to… “perfectly adequate profile”. Apparently, the value of the work travels a bit faster than the people who produce it. (And honestly, what does “perfectly adequate” even mean?) We often talk about “elitism” as a dirty word and “mediocrity” as a final verdict on a person. In practice, these ar

...and the Mother-in-Law Joins the Conversation In many professional settings, decision-making is imagined as a rational process confined to the workplace. Yet in many parts of the world, important choices take shape elsewhere, in the family living room, around a meal, or during a quiet exchange between relatives. From the Middle East to West Africa and South Asia, family involvement is often central to the way people commit, invest, or negotiate. In Canada, Northern Europe,