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Paper short abstract

What is science’s ‘rightful’ place? We propose a conceptual lens viewing both its renegotiation and politicisation as an active actor-driven process raising questions about science's performative nature and effects: what science is or ought to be, who gets to reimagine science and to what ends.

Paper long abstract

What is the 'rightful place of science'? This is continuously renegotiated, currently amidst backlashes against sustainability efforts, rising post-democratic politics and far-right populist movements, renewed geopolitical and military tensions. Actors, from “radical” researchers, governmental bodies, the military, to (authoritarian) policymakers, are destabilising existing scientific practices, funding streams, and institutions. Science, in this context, is both object and instrument of political struggle: deeply politicised yet often framed as apolitical by those who enact its politicisation. While a rich literature engages with science politicisation, how politicisation has performative effects remains blurred. This presentation advances a conceptual lens of science politicisation as performative, based on a critical engagement with STS and political science. Crucially, science and its institutions are inherently political and may at times become politicised, when their political character becomes visible, contested or strategically enacted – challenging, polarising or reshaping established forms of science. This politicisation relies on the enactment of performances, that we understand as producing social realities through contextualised interactions. Politicisation is then no longer a by-product of conflict or the exploitation of scientific uncertainty. Instead, it is an active actor-driven process that raises questions about what science is or ought to be, how politicisation is staged, by whom, and to what ends. We illustrate our theoretical argument through analytical vignettes drawn from sustainability science and security-related research. The politicisation of science then inevitably serves to reimagine the ‘rightful place of science’, yet the question remains who gets to reimagine science and for what purpose.