One of the benefits of thinking semiotically is an attraction to concept mapping. Concept mapping ‘affords’ a visual method for understanding relationships and Socialitie.

The following map provides a good overview of the foundations of psychosocial contexts and causation particularly, the emotions each one ‘breeds’. Such a map helps us not get caught up in the symptoms of psychosocial harm but rather to dig more deeply into the ethical, political, social, cultural and moral causes of psychosocial harm.

It is this political, social, ethical and cultural causation of harm that ought to be the concern to risk and safety. Unfortunately, the Disciplines of Ethics, Politics, Culture and Anthropology are not disciplines with which Safety really engages. Similarly in safety training, even the nature of power is of little interest. We see this in the AIHS Body of Knowledge Chapter on Ethics where there is no mention of the nature of power or politics in understanding the moral harm caused by various social contexts. Similarly, there is no Critical Discourse Analysis to show the sources of the symptoms Safety is interested in.

Indeed, look at any of the contexts described in the map above and search for discourse about these in any safety literature about psychosocial ‘hazards’. It seems that any discussion in safety of politics is taboo. Yet, look at all of these critical factors and they all demonstrate a political dimension in workplaces.

This is why in SPoR, we bring to the fore, studies about the Ethics and Politics of risk and, how the social-psychological dimensions is interconnected to the psycho-social dimension of risk. Without a balance of these two, the imbalance is a focus on ‘hazards’ that are not social nor political or ethical.

This focus on ‘hazards’ (objects) creates a blindness in the industry and a set of taboos that enable psychosocial cosmetics to flourish rather than a real approach to tackling the political and ethical dimensions of psychosocial risk.