You have to hand it to mono-disciplinary Safety. When it wants to know anything, it consults itself to prove its own bias. Head-in-the-sand safety is alive and well and being peddled through safety code (https://safetyrisk.net/deciphering-safety-code/) as something ‘moving forward’, ‘in-depth’ and ‘dispels the safety cloud’.
Of course, the book Safety Cultures, Safety Models does none of this. Indeed, there is very little in the book on culture or models. It is mostly the regurgitation of traditional safety, BBS and culture-as-structure.
Perhaps the worst of all the chapters in this text is Chapter 8 ‘The Visual Side of Safety’. Here we have a chapter anchored to Naïve Realism (unidentified) with no mention of symbolism, sign systems, semiotics, semiosis, semiosphere or any of the foundational knowledge needed to understand symbolic representation. No mention of any of the greatest sources in semiotics or discussion of semiotics itself. No sources outside of Safety except for Tufte are cited and everything is anchored to Safety that has no knowledge of semiotics, symbol/myth or the dynamics of representation.
The content of this chapter is so embarrassing because it discusses nothing about the ‘visual side of safety’. What it does is, endorse the naivety of safety as a cultural backwater and mono-disciplinary filter for the regurgitation of safety bias. Even when the chapter uses the word ‘metaphor’ there is no definition or reference to the major works in the area (eg. Lakoff and Johnson). As far as this chapter is concerned, lines, drawing and form are in themselves meaningful. The engineering of graphics.
The chapter doesn’t conceptualize the notion of ‘model’ neither does it offer any depth around the idea of visualisation. Even calling graphics the ‘visual side of safety’ demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge about semiotics and its critical part in how Safety represents itself.
As is typical of traditional safety, everything is anchored to Reason, Dekker, Bird and Heinrich. It even looks at graphic interfaces without any reference to symbolism, hermeneutics or information graphics. It even asserts that numerics-as-graphics hold ‘heuristical power’ without any reference to the unconscious. There is no discussion of the nature of perception, visual bias or semiotic studies. This is a chapter so naïve about the nature of ‘drawing’ that it should be Restricted, hence its R rating. Safety people shouldn’t have to see this stuff. None of it should be in a safety curriculum. It’s as if one is in a High School Tech Drawing class.
As one might expect the works of Bird, Heinrich and Reason are exemplified and discussed as ‘successful’ graphics. No mention of the completely concocted nature of this stuff, its faux basis, fictional symbolism and dangerous trajectories that drive safety mythology. The chapter even describes the nonsense of the swiss-cheese as ‘sophisticated’. No mention of how the symbolism of these semiotics drive deception, linearity, false causality, micro-safety trajectory, dangerous assumptions and the dangerous direction of safety mythology.
The chapter has no conception of the nature of metaphor, no mention of anything associated with semiotics or semiosis nor, any mention of symbolism/myth as the power to drive the collective unconscious as culture as a semiosphere.
A simple reading of any semiotic works would blast apart this amateurish piece of work that asserts that Reason, Bird and Heinrich are ‘popular’ and that this popularity is evidence that this symbolism is somehow good.
Most of the naïve assertions in this chapter are false, dangerous and misleading. If one really wants to understand the symbolism of safety a completely different bibliography and Transdisciplinary source is required. If you want to know about graphics, semiotics, symbolism and myth don’t read Dekkers
Here are some blogs that are far more helpful in understanding the nature of visualisation in Safety as a factor in culture.
· https://safetyrisk.net/cultural-semiotics-just-one-of-many-silences-in-safety-culture/
· https://safetyrisk.net/culture-silences-in-safety-semiotics/
· https://safetyrisk.net/branding-marketing-and-the-semiotics-of-safety/
· https://safetyrisk.net/semiotics-and-unconscious-communication-in-safety/
· https://safetyrisk.net/making-sense-of-semiotics-and-safety/
· https://safetyrisk.net/an-introduction-to-semiotics-and-risk/
· https://safetyrisk.net/semiotics-and-the-unconscious-messages-we-send/
· https://safetyrisk.net/semiotics-and-safety/
· https://safetyrisk.net/semiotics-semiology-and-safety-sense/
or perhaps read some of Lotman to get started on Semiotics and Culture:
Keep an eye out on this blog site in 2023 as Dr Long will be conducting a free Semiotics Module (https://cllr.com.au/product/semoiotics-and-the-social-psychology-of-risk-unit-3/ ) in the first half of the year. The course is positive, constructive, practical and educative about how to make semiotics meaningful in safety.
Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below