Managing ‘Wicked’ Technoscientific Problems: The Postnormal Science of Risk Narratives

Abstract 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.