Managing ‘Wicked’ Technoscientific Problems: The Postnormal Science of Risk Narratives (2023)
Lee, Clarissa Ai Ling (Author)
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
Volume: 17
Issue: 1
Pages: 6-33
Radioactive waste management in Malaysia remains a wicked problem, the result of extracting technoscientific knowledge for techno-economic and industrial science purposes. Early policies were not cognizant of the full extent of these risks. Moreover, wicked problems are complex problems that emerged out of interactions as a result of particular ecological conditions. Postnormal science (PNS) becomes the framework for the negotiation of these complexities. Science-based problem-solving is broadened to include non-science epistemologies, which enables the legitimation of participatory epistemic interventions from lay experts. The problems encountered in radioactive waste management resulted from the high-stake uncertainties involved in measuring and evaluating risks and their causes. Wicked problems arise when there are disagreements over the governance of risk; incomplete information received as a result of obtuseness in the decision-making process, or in the blackboxing of the risks occurrences and mechanisms of predictions; and contextual interpretations of data provided by different expert stakeholders that could culminate into misinformation. Wicked problems in the two cases to be discussed will be considered through these lenses: ambivalence over technoscientific authorities and the structures of (dis)trust, the over-reducibility of complex technoscientific problems, and the difficulties in enacting extended peer review when participatory practices were traditionally excluded from policy-making.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Rebecca Slayton;
(2023)
Arguments that Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949-2012
(/isis/citation/CBB404848285/)
Article
Seungmi Chung;
Kun Hee Kim;
Yeseul Park;
Hyomin Kim;
(2021)
A Site of Bounded Imaginaries: Local Narratives of Buan after Protests against a Nuclear Waste Repository
(/isis/citation/CBB959012966/)
Article
Papadopoulos, Dimitris;
(April 2011)
Alter-ontologies: Towards a constituent politics in technoscience
(/isis/citation/CBB185760393/)
Article
Monamie Bhadra Haines;
(February 2019)
Contested credibility economies of nuclear power in India
(/isis/citation/CBB710438620/)
Article
Tiago Ribeiro Duarte;
(2020)
Ignoring scientific advice during the Covid-19 pandemic: Bolsonaro’s actions and discourse
(/isis/citation/CBB565587316/)
Article
Hiro Saito;
(January 2021)
The Developmental State and Public Participation: The Case of Energy Policy-making in Post–Fukushima Japan
(/isis/citation/CBB786983437/)
Article
Christian Ross;
(2022)
Handservant of Technocracy: Public Engagement and Expertise in Heritable Human Genome Editing
(/isis/citation/CBB828766557/)
Article
Robert Evans;
(February 2022)
SAGE advice and political decision-making: ‘Following the science’ in times of epistemic uncertainty
(/isis/citation/CBB466460955/)
Article
Clarissa Ai Ling Lee;
(2019)
Nuclear science and technology in the Malaysian context: Three phases of technoscientific knowledge transfer (ETTLG)
(/isis/citation/CBB021801451/)
Article
Marika Hietala;
(2021)
Safer-than: Making Nuclear Waste Disposal More Familiar
(/isis/citation/CBB181460049/)
Article
Les Levidow;
(2015)
Introduction to SaC Forum: Public as Threats to Technoscientific Progress (Part I)
(/isis/citation/CBB171687109/)
Article
Harry Collins;
Robert Evans;
Martin Weinel;
(August 2017)
STS as science or politics?
(/isis/citation/CBB939789883/)
Article
Harry Collins;
Robert Evans;
Weinel;
(August 2016)
STS as science or politics?
(/isis/citation/CBB795627192/)
Article
Chiou, Wen-Tsong;
(June 2019)
What Roles Can Lay Citizens Play in the Making of Public Knowledge?
(/isis/citation/CBB197683533/)
Article
Sergio Sismondo;
(August 2017)
Casting a wider net: A reply to Collins, Evans and Weinel
(/isis/citation/CBB445744492/)
Article
Reardon, Jenny;
(2012)
The Democratic, Anti-Racist Genome? Technoscience at the Limits of Liberalism
(/isis/citation/CBB001251158/)
Article
Klaus Hoeyer;
(July 2015)
Regulatory Anatomy: How “Safety Logics” Structure European Transplant Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB387324455/)
Article
Kellie Owens;
(September 2017)
Too Much of a Good Thing? American Childbirth, Intentional Ignorance, and the Boundaries of Responsible Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB160615752/)
Book
Elizabeth Reddy;
(2023)
¡Alerta!: Engineering on Shaky Ground
(/isis/citation/CBB319453705/)
Article
Andrea Whittaker;
(March 2020)
Dying Overseas: Reflections on Translations of Care in International Medical Travel Hospitals in Malaysia and Thailand
(/isis/citation/CBB164932123/)
Be the first to comment!