Introduction
Technological risk is a daily reality in techno-industrial societies. We are exposed to them while living in our apartments, driving (or cycling) to work, and buying and eating our food. Risks are so embedded and part of our living world that they are almost invisible, becoming real only when something goes wrong and disrupts (temporarily or definitively) the lifeworld of individuals. This situation opens up the urgency of posing an important question: Can we control risks posed by technologies?
Several approaches, from engineering to policy, have attempted to answer the question without fully succeeding. In this short essay, I want to open some reflections on the matter, starting by investigating an aspect of risk that is often overlooked, namely, the procedural asymmetry between risk decision-making and exposition.
The framing of my discussion will be on the risk posed by technology. I will talk about them in general, but when needed, I will refer to examples of chemicals. This is because chemicals are an extreme case of ambiguous technology: they are present but difficult to access, illustrating differences between groups in risk decision-making.
I see this essay as a space for drafting ideas about risk. In this sense, I want to deconstruct (first) and speculate (after) the narratives and logic embedded into risk thinking. To do so, I will use the concept of control as my primary terrain to problematise risk narratives and offer trust as a possible alternative. My final objective in this essay is to see if risk can be thought of differently from mainstream approaches.
The essay unfolds as follows: I briefly elaborate on technological risks to open the stage. Second, I present democratic risk governance as a possible approach to technological risk. Third, I illustrate how big narratives about risk are operationalised in policy tools such as the precautionary principle (PP). The PP is instrumental in this essay as a site of crisis where generative thinking and alternative solutions to risk management can be developed.
On this line, democratic risk governance allows me to take a step further, ending my reflection by speculatively trying to bridge risk studies with decolonial literature. The reason for this is that I believe risk has a lot to learn from colonial and decolonial scholarship, as the latter is concerned with studying lifeworld exposed to continuous threats to existence.
Technological Risks and the Exclusion Mechanism
A fundamental issue in framing technological risks lies in their exclusionary nature. Chemicals offer a compelling example: while everyone interacts with chemicals daily, decisions about their risks are confined to a small group of experts. Despite the profound impact of chemicals on individuals and communities, these lived experiences are often sidelined in risk deliberation.
This exclusion stems from how chemicals—and many technologies—are traditionally framed as complex engineering artefacts outside public understanding (Beck, 2012). Historically, the close relationship between chemistry and industry has legitimised this framing, centralising expertise within industrial and scientific bodies. Consequently, chemical risk decision-making has been carried out by a narrow group, creating an asymmetry between those who decide and those who are exposed.
Such asymmetry transforms risk into a terrain of political struggle, raising questions of legitimacy, self-determination, and trust. Communities disproportionately affected by chemical risks, such as those living near industrial plants, often lack agency and structure capacity for contrasting decisions that profoundly shape their lifeworld (Renfrew & Pearson, 2021; Richter et al., 2021).
However, this framing is neither inevitable nor unchangeable. If we view chemical risks not as solely technical problems but as shared societal concerns, they can become a space for broader engagement. Shifting the discussion from isolated expertise to inclusive deliberation may help bridge the asymmetry between decision-makers and affected communities, fostering a more democratic and relational approach to risk governance.
In the next section, I will briefly present Democratic Risk Governance as an alternative approach to technological risk.
Thinking about Risk: Democratic Risk Governance
One possible way to overcome the exclusion mechanism within technological risk is to bring it back to the people, making it part of the public space. This is in line with Sheila Jasanoff's idea of democratic risk governance, which attempts to take decision-making out of the hands of distance experts and bring it under the care of democratic politics and communities.
Behind the idea of making risk a matter of public discussion and concern lies the attempt to align risk decision-making and risk exposure to the same group of people, overcoming forms of risk alienation in favour of a more informal and one-to-one relationship.
This perspective is rooted in an existential understanding, where risk is a condition of co-constitutive relationships. In this sense, risk becomes a matter of community as an occasion of trust building because of exposure to risk under the same conditions; risk becomes a terrain of cooperation as it is in the best interest to prevent it.
Nevertheless, technological societies have a unique exposition to risk, meaning they are under continuous risk. The reason for this is the unavoidability of technological incidents due to the inherent tendency of technology to fail. At some point, a car will crash, a chemical plant will have toxic leaks, and a nuclear reactor will melt down. Thus, trust becomes about trusting humans, the system, and its mitigation and acceptance capacity.
By following this view, the best strategy for risk is not necessarily to attempt to eliminate risk but rather to design for risk, meaning that where it is possible, risk can be eliminated, but even more importantly is to create community relationships and social spaces that afford reactions to risk conditions.
The suggestion of design for risk is not only part of a political project where risk is seen as a topic to bring back to the communities taking place under forms of democratic governance, but as well it is connected to the recognition of epistemic limitation when it comes to technological embeddedness in society.
Jasanoff has problematised risk from a political perspective, understanding that if the risk is technologically posed, the response must come from outside technology. What this implies is the recognition that human agency is limited when it comes to technological control and risk management. This is due to an ontological condition of technology that, once embedded into society, assumes a degree of independence from human control.
Jasanoff is not the only one who understands an ontological crisis within risk framing. However, to see this idea, we must look outside Western tradition. For example, in Japan, risk discussions are part of failure studies. In this scholarship, the limitation of epistemic forms of knowing risk is often referred to with the concept of sōtegai. The term can be ruffly translated as “the concept established outside”, and it has usually been associated with the unknowns unknowns – those risks that are impossible to be thought of in advance.
Similarly to Jasanoff's views, sōtegai suggests an ontological understanding where a degree of independence is established between humans and technology once the latter comes into the world.
For example, in the case of chemicals such as PFAS, their hazards are independent of human agency. The chemicals can travel and accumulate in the environment and human bodies, making them highly challenging to control. In this sense, the risk posed by PFAS is established outside the human domain – the chemicals are outside human control.
This example points to the fact that inherent to risk, there is a space of uncertainty that is ungraspable to navigate. For this reason, within democratic and communitarian governance of risk, as Jasanoff proposes, multiple perspectives and forms of knowledge in risk deliberation can synthesise a more shared response to risk and reduce the asymmetry between who decides and who is exposed to it.
The suggestion is that this allows for incorporating democratic values within risk decision-making, such as legitimising the right to speak and self-determination.
Precautionary Principle: Making Things Real
The implications of democratic risk governance can be better illustrated when reflecting on policy tools for risk prevention, such as the precautionary principle (PP). The PP is a relevant example because while it argues for precaution regarding risk situations, it shows asymmetries within the decision-making.
The PP is a tool to guide action in situations of risk where epistemological uncertainties occur. It has been proposed to be used when scientific knowledge is missing for assessing new technological applications - for example, the consequences of chemical bioaccumulation. In these situations, the best action is not to adopt the technology until new knowledge is present.
Formulating these terms, the PP is a reasonable approach. However, reality is often more complicated and fuzzy, and several critics and limitations have argued against the approach throughout the years.
One of the most common ones is the so-called problem of paralysis, which states that if the PP should prevent any activity that presents a credible threat of serious harm, we face an impossibility of action since negative consequences are always potentially present.
For example, if we consider chemicals such as PFAS, we know that their production should be ceased because of the adverse effects on the environment and human health; however, they are also essential for the energy transition due to their technical characteristics. Following the PP, we are blocked, facing a situation in which it is not clear what the best course of action is: banning PFAS and deleting the hazard but with the risk of slowing down the energy transition or using PFAS to accelerate the energy transition but with the possibility of continuing of posing threats to the environment and human health.
Different solutions have been advanced to overcome the problem of paralysis. One of the most convincing ones proposes exercising precaution on the option you have less control and capacity for intervention.
For example, in the case of PFAS and bioaccumulation, you have less control over the bioaccumulation rather than in the design of new technologies for the energy transition; therefore, according to this view, it is justified to phase out the production of PFAS and to find alternative options for enabling the energy transition. However, the solution is not so simple. This is because, while the PP considers the immediate hazard posed by PFAS, it does not consider the correlated aspect connected to not choosing to prioritise the energy transition.
For example, the environmental degradation and biodiversity lost in areas in which fossil fuels are extracted, the increasing effects of CO2 emission, the political and societal inequalities that the fossil fuel enterprise creates, and the risks connected to the transportation of fossil fuels such as oil spills due to ship racks. In this sense, the options that seemed more controllable - i.e., changing design for the energy transition; if put into context, we see instead how much uncertainty is present.
This points to a situation in which, if zoomed in, control is apparent and illusionary. Elsewhere (see Perfigli and de Boer under review), I have argued on control's illusionary and deceitful aspects. In short, control can be viewed as a concept favouring specific political agendas – i.e., a technocratic approach to risk; and legitimises the narratives by operating a process of reduction and naturalisation. For example, reducing the energy transition to solely a technological matter will occur in any case due to an evolutionary and naturalised understanding of progress where it will just happen because it is in the “natural order of things”.
The more significant issue in overcoming the problem of paralysis and making the PP an action-guiding principle in situations of trade-off and multiple scenarios is the premise on which the notion of control is posed. Nevertheless, the rationale points to something interesting: a space of action for which attention can be asked. In the next section, I will explore this space for attention.
The analysis of the PP highlights the inherent limitations of existing frameworks for risk governance. Despite its emphasis on prevention and caution, the principle remains rooted in technocratic modes of thinking and expert-led decision-making, perpetuating the same asymmetries it seeks to address. This brings us to a critical point: can we imagine a fundamentally different way of approaching risk that moves beyond these paradigms?
Having explored how risk management and the precautionary principle operate within current narratives, I now attempt to propose a more radical and alternative approach informed by decolonial scholarship. Drawing on Indigenous and relational epistemologies, this perspective challenges the foundational asymmetry between decision-makers and those exposed to risk. It invites us to view risk not as a problem to be controlled but as a shared condition, demanding trust.
Decoloniality and Risk: A Utopia Possibility?
In this section, I want to speculate on the possibility of developing a PP that acknowledges the co-constitution between the risk and the context in which it exhibits itself. In other words, rather than shifting the burden of deceitfully choosing the most controllable scenario operating in asymmetrical thinking. I want to briefly outline the possibility of aligning risk decisions and exposition to the same group within the PP application.
To do so, I borrow from decolonial studies, particularly the work of Macaren Gomez-Barris in her book The Extractive Zone. The book explores the political structure and social ecologies present in sites of extraction, particularly in South America, where Indigenous communities are constantly living at risk of extinction and annihilation of their identities and loss of land. The book describes and reflects on acts of resistance made possible by the co-constitution between risk and context, where interaction spaces are at stake.
The ontological formulation is a space where the concept established outside (sōtegai) is represented by the extractive logic of resource accumulation present within the colonial enterprise before and the neoliberal machine after posing a hazard to the lifeworld of the Indigenous land both within the biological and cultural dimension.
An example of the interaction between the two contrasting realities is in Ecuador’s eastern region of the Napo River, where oil fields and refineries come into contact with the Yasuni National Park. Here, risk framing becomes a theatre of dispute opening to uncertainty. From an extractive logic perspective, risk emerges as an asymmetry, while following the Indigenous standpoint, risk is a condition of co-constitution.
The example can be read from a democratic risk perspective. Within the dominant technocratic approaches, risk legitimisation would occur by a team of experts who are most probably dislocated from the risk and not exposed to it.
Following this framing, the petrochemical industry, in the form of a legitimate expert on hydrocarbon production, would have a bigger degree of agency within risk decision-making. However, the bigger exposure to the risk posed by petrochemical extraction and production would not be the petrochemical but the communities and ecosystems living near the field, where they have little agency in the decision process.
Conversely, by applying a democratic risk governance approach, risk becomes a condition ontologically constituting the Napo River region. This is because extractive activities are dominant forces that operate on an existential level, impacting communities and relationships. It is part of the region that has the legitimacy of talking as it shares the condition of being with the risk.
To respond to this condition, democratic risk governance suggests making risk a means of relationship-making where trust plays an enacting role. Thus, departing from a democratic risk governance approach, risk becomes a space of trust-making where the decision and exposition about risk are in the hands of the communities experiencing and living with the risk.
The question becomes whether this latter perspective can inform the PP and, if possible, what suggestions can be made. In attempting to answer the question, I take inspiration from Macarena Gomez-Barris and her suggestion for Indigenous sustainability, where she frames the approach as a relational practice composed of three main aspects that I believe can also be applied to risk.
Following this view, risk becomes (i) a transgenerational concept that requires (ii) care in the form of sustained attention and (iii) ongoing perception as with monitoring activity. Within this framework, risk becomes a terrain of political dispute and negotiation where identities are performed and recognised. Put differently, risk becomes a space that necessitates trust, recognising a shared condition, and bringing different epistemologies and experiences into the discussion.
It is an open question of whether the PP can be fully developed according to communitarian approaches to risk and incorporate perspectives from decolonial scholarship. Nevertheless, by following these traces, there is a possibility for opening a dialogue between risk scholarship and decolonial studies. I have argued that the former can learn much from the latter.
Conclusion
Technology is a gift and a burden. On the one hand, it has brought material prosperity (at least in Western countries), making life easier. On the other hand, technology has put societies at a continuous risk.
For decades, the response to this condition has been to attempt to control technological risk by reducing it as a problem to be solved through the same modes of thinking that have created it. This has shown to be effective in many ways but has also led to significant political questions.
In this essay, I have attempted to problematise this idea of controlling risk by deconstructing the thinking behind it and showing that control is based on an asymmetry between who decides and who is exposed.
In response, I have offered an alternative view, following Jasanoff’s democratic risk governance, leading to a problematisation of control and arguing for the possibility of a reconciliation between decision and exposition under risk.
An important aspect of the essay was to make visible how these philosophical thoughts about risk matter to society. To do so, I have briefly discussed the PP, showing how control thinking is inherent to the approach. From this, whether we can develop a PP differently by following a communitarian perspective on risk arises.
Answering such a complex question would have been too ambitious for this essay. However, in the last section, I took the freedom of taking a radical position and suggesting the possibility of bridging risk thinking with decolonial literature.
This can be seen as a call to humility and engagement. Recognising how risk narratives are part of an enterprise in which risk is reduced to a problem to be solved rather than a condition that needs to be answered.
The suggestion is that decolonial experiences and literature have a lot to teach because Indigenous communities and contexts, such as the ones that Macaren Gomez-Barris discusses in her work, dramatically live on the continuous edge of uncertainty and extinction.
References
1. Fisch, M. (2019) An anthropology of the Machine: Tokyo’s commuter train network. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
2. Gómez-Barris, M. (2017) The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives. Durham: Duke University Press.
3. Jasanoff, Sheila. "Beyond Calculation: A Democratic Response to Risk." Disaster and the Politics of Intervention. Ed. Andrew Lakoff. Columbia University Press, November 2009
4. Renfrew, D., & Pearson, T. W. (2021). The social life of the “Forever chemical.” Environment and Society, 12(1), 146–163. https://doi.org/10.3167/ares.2021.120109
5. Richter, L., Cordner, A., & Brown, P. (2021). Producing ignorance through regulatory structure: the case of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Sociological Perspectives, 64(4), 631–656. https://doi.org/10.1177/0731121420964827
6. ‘Risk society’ (2012) Ulrich Beck, pp. 30–47. doi:10.4324/9780203107928-8.