Keywords

5.1 Visualisation and Representation

Visualisation is an important ingredient in science, as in most creative activities. Basically, creativity requires imagination, and visualisations can be extremely powerful. Think, for example, of the recently published, first ever, photography of a black hole [1] in the universe. Undoubtedly, this representation of a physical phenomenon—whose existence has previously been evidenced mainly by theory—will be of great importance not only for further scientific work on the relativity theory, but also for raising money for space research.

Visualisation is a linguistic contraction of the terms visual and representation. What the contraction elegantly hide is that visualisation has both surface and depth. The visual aspect is the surface, while representation goes deeper. Think for example of the famous Munch work The Scream; while the visual aspects of that painting are surely interesting—the technique, the colours, the proportions—the most intriguing issue lies beneath the surface; how shall we understand The Scream, what kind of psychological condition does Munch portray, what occasioned the work, and how can we ascribe personal and collective relevance to the painting? What does this two-dimensional art work—that has turned into an obligatory passage point in art science and art history—represent?

In this chapter, I will focus on representation. I will discuss what it is with representations of safety that makes them so powerful, and what is at stake when representations travel across contexts and scales. A widely known representation—or metaphor—in safety science, the sharp end/blunt end metaphor, will serve as a case.

Representations have received much attention in science studies. A brief review of representations and their potential as immutable mobiles in scientific practice can therefore be worthwhile, before proceeding with the discussion of representations in safety science.

5.2 Representations as Immutable Mobiles

The books Representation in Scientific Practice [2] and Representation in scientific practice revisited [3] are a good place to start to understand the role of representations in science. In the preface of the latter, Lynch and Woolgar reflect upon the activities and the discourse on representations among the contributors leading up to the book. There were different suggestions with regard to the book’s title, but.

(…) we decided to focus the issue on representation in scientific practice. Inspired in part by the growing interest in visualization, we also wanted to bring into play close studies of verbal interaction at the lab bench (or field site), as well as analyses of the literacy and pragmatic relations among texts, depictions, and activities. [3]

The citation reminds us of the close relationship between visualisations, texts and actions, in the sense that they are all representations.

Central aspects of representations are perception, suggestiveness and communication—the way visualisations describe and explain phenomena—and these aspects have received a significant proportion of the attention in the treatment of visualisation in safety research, e.g., by Le Coze [4, 5]. Less attention has been given to the circulation of visualisations in safety science.

In Visualisation and cognition: thinking with eyes and hands, Latour [6] explores the circulation of such types of representations—frequently labelled inscriptions: drawings, diagrams, plots, images, maps, signs, photographs—in science. Latour underscores that the characteristics of inscriptions and ways of perceiving them in this context is not a question of perception, but of “something deeper” [6]: particularly it is about mobilisation and stability. Inscriptions in science may be highly mobile: science is about capturing essential aspects, characteristics, connections and causalities of the empirical world, to transform them into theoretical formulations that may easily circulate across a larger scientific community. Inscriptions may be immutable: immutable inscriptions are such that their shapes and contents are left unchanged as they circulate in the scientific community. In addition, inscriptions may be scalable: The scale of inscriptions may be modified without any change in internal proportions.

Latour labels scientific inscriptions that are both mobile and immutable immutable mobiles, and he ascribes to them an enormous significance in science and research:

It seems to me that most scholars who have worked on the relations between inscription procedures and cognition, have, in fact, in their various ways, been writing about the history of these immutable mobiles. [6]

Together, such aspects of inscriptions—and all representations that can count as immutable mobiles—have played an important role in the development and communication of modern science, for example in geography (maps—e.g., Ptolemy’s 2nd-century world map [7]), in chemistry (formulas, Mendeleev’s [8] periodic table) and in sociology (e.g., four-field tables).

However, the ingenuity of immutable mobiles comes at a price. By ensuring mobility and immutability of a phenomenon, by turning an unruly three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional, stable representation that can travel without much friction, enter into and stabilise wider webs of knowledge, one runs the risk of inscribing ontology in ways that produce challenges when the representation arrives in a different context. This challenge will be discussed in the remainder of this chapter.

5.3 Representation in Safety Science: The Sharp End/Blunt End Metaphor

As Le Coze [4] shows, representations have had a tremendous impact on the developments and discourses in safety science, and some of the most influential representations function almost as obligatory passage points; think for example of Perrow’s [9] risk matrix and Reason’s [10] Swiss cheese model.

In the following, we shall try to extend the perspective on representations in safety science, and reflect on their strengths and weaknesses as scientific objects, by viewing them as immutable mobiles. As a case, we will use the sharp end/blunt end representation—or metaphor—introduced in safety science by James Reason and later used by many others [11,12,13,14].

While the sharp end/blunt end metaphor does not have one particular canonical visualisation associated with it (but see Fig. 5.1 below), it is so visual in its expression—and by now so embodied—that it immediately evokes a canvas onto which almost any safety scientist or safety practitioner can envisage the scenery of the sharp end/blunt end.

Fig. 5.1
2 illustrations. An inverted triangle is labeled the blunt end of managers, regulators, and developers at its base, and practitioners at the sharp end. A triangle laid sideways labeled blunt end factors removed lists the sharp-end factors like morals, regulators, and company, among others.

Sharp end/blunt end, from Woods et al. [16] (left) and Hollnagel [14] (right)Footnote

Illustration in the left panel is used with permission from the author. Illustration in the right panel is reproduced from Barriers and Accident Prevention, 1st Edition, published by Routledge. © Erik Hollnagel, [14]. Reproduced by arrangement with Taylor & Francis Books UK. All rights reserved. Both illustrations are excluded from our open access license.

Full size image

The sharp end/blunt end metaphor assumes both a hierarchical and a linear view on sociotechnical systems. The sharp end refers to the context where work is carried out and where the consequences of actions manifest themselves directly and immediately—here and now. The blunt end, on the other hand, invokes spheres of the organisation and beyond that do not directly take part in work at the sharp end, but it influences the personnel, equipment and general conditions of work at the sharp end. The blunt end is there and then [15] (see Fig. 5.1).

The sharp end/blunt end bifurcation may, by its mere existence, lend support to arguments for different perspectives on safety, from compliance perspectives that promote the possibility of managing safety from the blunt end, to practice based perspectives that emphasises the role of situated practice, adaptations and adjustments—as mostly accentuated in resilience studies.

The sharp end/blunt end metaphor is highly mobile and combinable. If we consider Rasmussen’s [17] famous hierarchical representation of a sociotechnical system, the sharp end/blunt end metaphor has been tightly integrated into it—or vice versa; not only as a way of drawing, but as a way of thinking in linear and hierarchical terms. So incorporated is the sharp end/blunt end metaphor in our thinking that it is close to an obligatory passage point for contextualising risk and safety in a landscape of organisational structures, regulations and practice.

The sharp end/blunt end metaphor is one of those representations that are difficult to bypass, although one does not necessarily subscribe to its foundational linear/hierarchical ontology. This ontology, draped in controversies, does not seem to stand in the way for using the metaphor also in contexts where the sociotechnical arrangements and dependencies are thought of as systemic. As such, and for the following reasons, the sharp end/blunt end visualisation is very powerful;

  • It is highly mobile: One need not say more than “sharp end” to make commensurable series of imaginaries of operators working in such different locations and situations as in control rooms of nuclear power plants, in airline cockpits, in the midst of forests burning or at the deck of aircraft carriers. At the same time, we imagine those blunt end managers far away that have structured the conditions that the operators work under.

  • It has immutable qualities; traversing different contexts, scales and purposes, it is capable of remaining its associative vectors that reproduce imaginaries of linear/hierarchical causality even in circumstances where system functionality and descriptions are explicitly otherwise—think for example of any FRAM visualisation (e.g., [18, 19]).

  • It is scalable; the sharp end and the blunt end are relative terms that apply to settings that are highly different in scale, but still internally consistent. As noted by Karlene Roberts, “Everybody’s blunt end is somebody else’s sharp end” [20]. Hence, if the blunt end in one setting is the administrative level at a hospital, the sharp end may refer to the work of paramedics at an accident site. In relation to the blunt end of the World Health Organisation’s headquarters in Geneva, however, the local hospital can naturally be considered as the sharp end. In this way, the sharp end/blunt end metaphor can easily be circulated across contexts with limited need to undertake comprehensive work to adapt scales between the contexts. As we shall see, however, there is a challenge associated with this transportation across contexts and scales.

5.4 The Twist of the Sharp End/Blunt End Metaphor

Intuitive as the sharp end/blunt end metaphor may seem, it is more ambiguous than comes into expression in the daily use of it. Applied to a micro scale and a mesoscale—that is—up to a level of organisational life—and in the context of organisational language—ambiguity is not particularly conspicuous.Footnote 2 Those practitioners portrayed in the sharp end in Fig. 5.1 tend to be those who “actually interact with the hazardous process in their roles as pilots, physicians, spacecraft controllers, or power plant operators” [12], and those who are in a position to make the necessary adaptations. In an organisational setting, thus, there will often be a straightforward convergence between the intuitive interpretation of the sharp end/blunt end metaphor, and the actual operationalisation of organisational charts of everyday work on the other.

However, as soon as we depart from the realm of organisations and direct the attention towards complex sociotechnical systems, or as we scale up further and transcend the boundaries of organisations and traditional sociotechnical systems and enter into a landscape of societies and global risks, limitations of the metaphor begin to appear. As we, in this new context, review our inventory of representations to make sure that the relationship between representations and the represented are adequate, we may find that it is no longer obvious what constitutes the sharp end and the blunt end.

One of the most serious challenges we are facing in terms of societal resilience today is the climate change that threatens to seriously change living conditions on earth. One of the hot controversies in that connection is whether the actor-network in the best position to stagger or reverse climate change are that of international politics or of “ordinary citizens”. If we think of the societal/global system in terms of a sociotechnical system with a sharp end and a blunt end, there immediately seems to be parallels between sharp end operators and citizens, on one hand, and between blunt end managers and top-level politicians on the other. With that parallel, at first it seemingly makes sense to think of non-sustainable citizen behaviour (unsustainable consumerism) as an issue relating to the sharp end, and of lack of regulatory measures as a problem located at the blunt end, among politicians and other global decision makers. The potential of resilience lying in adaptation inclines us to address in particular the sharp end, which would in that case be citizen behaviour. But how well does that framing fit the nature of climate change and the ecosocial systems it takes place within?

The issue here is not whether the climate crisis should be addressed at the sharp end or the blunt end, but rather what is the sharp end and what is the blunt end of the climate system? Contrary to our (my) hasty assumption above, I shall contend that in the context of climate change—if I am forced to relate to it in terms of sharp and blunt ends—the realm of international politics and decision makers constitute the sharp end, and the realm of the citizens constitute the blunt end.

The sharp end/blunt end metaphor is created with local risks in mind. It is for that reason the traditional “local operator” is the one who has been associated with the sharp end. However, when the risk is global, we need to look for global operators. In the blunt end, we will find those who give the operators mandates—or orders—to act on their behalf, and those are ordinary citizens.

In this perspective, an example of the climate system’s sharp end may be constellations such as the United Nations Climate Change Conferences,Footnote 3 yearly conferences (Conference of the parties—COP) that assess progress in dealing with climate change. These constellations can be described as the sharp end since.

  • They have been arenas for negotiating the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement—among the sharpest measures so far for dealing with climate change at a global scale.

  • Climate is a global phenomenon that exists and can only be measured and addressed at a global scale.Footnote 4

  • The main tool to analyse global climate change is The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose assessment reports are key scientific inputs into the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The reports are compilations of worldwide climate research from a multitude of disciplines and are thus a holistic evaluation of the climate status at a global scale.

  • Actions taken by the COP can have direct consequences for the global climate if they are articulated as binding commitments,Footnote 5 because they may alter practices at a global scale very quickly—here and now, so to speak.

In the context of global risks like climate change, the blunt represents “the citizens”. Citizens are at the blunt end since.

  • Citizens are voters that provide their country representatives with the mandates they bring to the COPs to make sharp decisions.

  • Trends and changes (adaptations) in the public opinion seldom stabilise and materialise until they are operationalised into (or at least supported by) laws.

  • Local citizens have access to the weather, but no direct opportunity whether to estimate nor influence climate other than through the “climate operators” at the sharp end.

In the context of societal resilience in times of climate crisis, the sharp end and the blunt end seem to have switched poles; the operators with the capacity to undertake adjustments and adaptations (of laws and regulations) that make a difference here and now are represented by the political elite and other decision makers, while those at the blunt end—distanced in space and time—that have little direct influence, but provide the political elite with their mandate, are represented by ordinary voting and public opinion forming citizens.

5.5 A Programme for Societal Resilience

The resilience perspective is particularly occupied with work as it is actually carried out [25,26,27], and to study and understand work-as-done and the potential of adaptation one needs to pay particular attention to the actor-network in the sharp end. When the subject for resilience is global risks, we must populate the sharp end/blunt end metaphor carefully for it to ensure representability. Thus, when we—in this age where human activity has a dominant influence on the world’s ecosystems and climate change—want to pay attention to the sharp end of the world-as-done, we need to look to the work, the adaptations and adjustments that take place on the global arena. Practice studies, then, which have been so popular in the field of resilience, will in this context advise us to study political practices at least as thoroughly as we study citizen practices.

It is not only when travelling across scales—such as from the organisational to the societal—that the representability of visualisations and metaphors is challenged. There is a slogan from the early days of environmental politics and activism, encouraging us to “think globally, act locally”.Footnote 6 There is an interesting connection between this slogan, the organisational sharp end/blunt end metaphor and the neo-liberal motive that is sometimes—unfortunately—ascribed to the resilience ideology. That slogan echoes from a vantage point where one does not oversee the form scale of global risks, where international politics have few tools for global governance, and where citizens are thought of as consumers of goods instead of producers of politics. That is neo-liberalism, and it is unrealistic that such a regime in the long run will prove resilient.

The example of climate change illustrates a challenge that may arise when representations travel too far away from their place of origin; a resilient global society requires global scale adaptations, and such initiatives are in the hands of international politics and decision makers at the sharp end of the global sociotechnical system. Without such sharp end adaptations, one would never see binding agreements on global risks issues such as climate change, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and threatened biodiversity. In light of that, a representational slogan for resilience in an age where the true scale of risks is global although the feel of them is local and individual, could be “Think locally, act globally”.

The paradox of this text is that the author and probably many readers do not think of systems in terms of sharp end and blunt end at all, as little as we want to distribute causes and effects along the same axis. So why discuss the metaphor at all? The answer to that is highly pragmatic: although we don’t believe in it, the metaphor continues to work, just like we in the digital era continue to arrange our world into 0 and 1 s although we know that our lifeworlds are (still for a while) much richer than that. We probably still will have to live with the sharp end/blunt end representation also in the future, but in terms of research method it is advisable to always have in mind Latour’s [28] slogan: follow the actors. That will—within the limitations of research funding—enable us to capture significant work across the networks of actors all the way from the shop floor to the boardrooms, from the citizens to the UN conferences.