La sostenibilità come paradigma: il caso dell’infrastruttura Metrofood-RI nel settore agroalimentare

Abstract

The radical changes that have been affecting society in recent decades impose on the science in general, and the social sciences in particular, a serious rethinking of concepts and research methods in order to be able to adequately interpret the transition underway. These are, in fact, transformations that do not only concern interpersonal relations and the objectives of social life but start from and are reflected in the crisis of the environmental ecosystem and in the inability of the present generations, and even more so of future generations, to be able to satisfy their needs with the development model followed until now. In the search for a different development paradigm to apply, global adherence to the sustainable paradigm cannot but urge all sciences to rethink their own theoretical and methodological paths, making the sustainable paradigm also their own. This entails a real scientific revolution that certain phenomena, such as the pandemic crisis, have also imprinted, revealing the irreversibility of this ongoing process. The need for an integration of the sciences leads to a transdisciplinary approach to the study of the object of research, which is becoming increasingly complex, to the extent that it is necessary to 1) assume future time perspectives and 2) integrate even non-expert knowledge into increasingly proven models such as that of citizen science. The case study offered by the Pan-European Research Infrastructure for the Promotion of Metrology in Food and Nutrition (METROFOOD-RI) will be a good practice of how sustainability is now a paradigm for integrated sciences and citizen science.