Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the potential applicability of Post-normal Science as a more context-sensitive, transdisciplinary approach to addressing the complex global challenge of anti-microbial resistance and enabling incorporation of anthropological insights into science-policy deliberations.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, we consider the applicability of a Post-normal Science (PNS) Approach to addressing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as a major global challenge to human health and wellbeing. The approach used by normal science to manage complex social and biophysical systems as if they were simple scientific exercises has brought us to our present mixture of intellectual triumph and socio-ecological peril. PNS is a new conception of the management of complex science-related issues, focusing on aspects of problem-solving that tend to be neglected in traditional accounts of scientific practice: uncertainty, value loading, and a plurality of legitimate perspectives. It considers these elements as integral to science and science-for-policy. The ideas and concepts belonging to PNS witness the emergence of new problem-solving strategies in which the role of science is appreciated in its full context of the complexity, diversity and uncertainty of natural and social systems and the relevance of human commitments, values and diversity. It is hence able to provide a coherent transdisciplinary framework for extended participation in framing, researching and evaluating real world complex issues by addressing core values such as sustainability, holism, quality, democratization of expertise, methodological pluralism, integration, transparency, responsibility, safety and equity. Standard scientific frameworks are ill-suited to addressing critical globalised issues as significant and complex as AMR with its multidimensional drivers, costs and impacts. We consider whether PNS can provide a more anthropologically receptive, context-sensitive and biologically sensible approach to understanding and addressing the rise and spread of AMR worldwide.