51 Stories in Culture FREE SAMPLE

This is a book about culture and the nature of risk. Its foundational premise is that culture cannot be known through books or propositions but is best known through the phenomenon of experience and felt knowing. So, in a way, the book is situated in a paradox. But paradox need not be a problem rather a typical characteristic of living and being in culture.

Culture is a Wicked Problem. Whilst we need to talk about it, study it and experience it, it has no limit and, like the Semiosphere, Mythosphere, Atmosphere and the Universe, it has no beginning or end. Yet, in order to live in it, we need to try and grasp what we can about the lived life or being in culture. After all, differences in culture also pose the greatest threat to understanding, community and
Socialitie. Unless we understand cultures other than our own, we will never learn to live in harmony and being with others.

This book uses the semiotic of the Culture Cloud to explore as many dimensions of culture as possible within the confines of a book. The Culture Cloud is a semiotic, metaphor and framework to help tackle everything from worldviews, paradigms and being, to living with risk, human fallibility and faith. The focus of the book is also on the nature of risk and, the risk and safety industry including, it’s culture of safety. Whilst the safety industry argues about itself and even denies such a thing as ‘safety
culture’ exists, this is mostly due to one of its principle cultural characteristics, ignorance.

Most often the safety industry comments on culture from a source of no expertise in culture. We know this by the many silences and omissions in any discussion about culture in the sector. For example, all of the following are never discussed in books on safety culture: myth, ritual, faith, religion, gesture, semiotics, linguistics, affordance, ethics, para-linguistics, memes, personhood, politics and
power. In this book none of these are off limits. This enables a new look at culture through the lens of the Social Psychology of Risk (SPoR) worldview that poses a new way of engaging in culture and risk.

The two authors bring their considerable depth of experience, education and risk intelligence to this discussion on culture. The comparative stories that each author brings to discussion, the rich differences between two distinctly different cultures, views of faith, religion, philosophy and the world, make this a unique book. This enables the reader to feel the richness of diverse cultures but also the way these two authors come together in tolerance, understanding, discussion, debate and resonance.

It is through the many stories of this book that the reader walks with each in their world, experiences their history and begins to understand their particular focus on culture and risk.

The book commences and concludes with a conversation between each author to emphasise a desire to step beyond an academic understanding to a lived experience of journeying in learning. This book is an invitation to join in that walk and understand cultural being.