Authors: Nanni V K, Dr. Abhisarika Prajapati
Abstract: This review article seeks to look into the critical connection between science as a social institution and two of the pressing global challenges: sustainability and development. Science is generally perceived to be an objective quest for knowledge; it is, however, fundamentally embedded within the social structure influenced by political, economic, and cultural forces.1 Its institutional features, like funding mechanisms, research priorities, peer review processes, and the authority granted to experts, determine the course and influence of technological and theoretical development pertinent to environmental and developmental issues. Drawing from some key sociological perspectives, including the SSK, modernization theory, and critical theory, among others, conceptual clarity is established for science, social institution, sustainability, and development. A literature review reveals tension between positivist faith in technological fixes that emanates primarily from institutional science and a call for holistic, equitable, and locally appropriate solutions by sociologists. The core reflection contends that true inclusive sustainability and development require moving away from considering science simply as a source of technical solutions toward holding it socially accountable. For this, it argues, democratic governance of science, a focus on indigenous and local knowledge systems, and a critical analysis of the ways whereby institutional science reinforces or subverts existing power structures that perpetuate unsustainable practices and global inequalities, will be seminal. A conclusion calls for a renewed sociological agenda-one that actively engages and contests the institutional framework of science-to bring forth a more just and sustainable future for all
DOI: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17616879
