Speaking a New Language in Safety Dekker wisely recommends that Safety needs a new language (and discourse) for understanding and acting safety (Drift into Failure, pp. 15, 49, 53, 58, 123). He rightly asserts that the language (and grammar) of reductionist (seeking simple binary answers) thinking doesn’t serve the needs of safety very well, driving […]
Robert Long
Tackling Risk, A Field Guide to Risk and Learning
Tackling Risk, A Field Guide to Risk and Learning Following on from the very successful publication of the Risky Conversations video series and book, Dr Long and Roy Fitzgerald are proud to announce the publication of book six in the series on risk: Tackling Risk, A Field Guide to Risk and Learning. You can purchase […]
Please share our posts
No Choice, No Say
No Choice, No Say One of the great loves of Dumb Down Safety is guilt, binary attribution and projection of deficit views of risk and safety. Unless the curriculum of WHS moves ahead in transdisciplinary way (https://safetyrisk.net/isnt-it-time-we-reformed-the-whs-curriculum/ ), it is not likely that much will change. There is no better example of the binary Safety […]
Please share our posts
But you Promised?
But you Promised? When you don’t know what to do about safety chose a dumb down binary discourse. Here is the latest from Safework NSW http://www.safetystartswithyou.nsw.gov.au/safety-promise There’s nothing more reliable for dumb down than the core principle: ‘It didn’t work last time so, lets do it again’. Beller (Beller, S. (2002). Conditional promises and threats […]
Please share our posts
An Social Ecology of Resilience
An Social Ecology of Resilience There are some word combinations we ought to be suspicious of, here are some: · Fast Food · Reckless Safety · Machine Learning · Human Factors · Resilience Engineering Our language gives away our semiosis (construction of meaning) and in such word blends we see some phenomenal contradictions. If we […]
