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The research topic shapes the interdisciplinary process. Both institutional and societal incentives favor the funding of research on "hot" problems over more stable, ongoing phenomena. All social research addresses social life and language in motion, but problem-based research also mobilizes an array of stakeholders, often coming together around a slogan-concept (such as cultural property) that proposes a solution for an intractable, complex situation. "Mode 2" knowledge networks around hot problems bring an unusual degree of scrutiny to academic work, while heightening the differential stances of researchers and their disciplines, turning the project itself into a hot zone. A remedy lies in setting the team to examine the common sense of the problem and its slogans as a starting point for more focused research.

Amanda Bryant-Friedrich (Fig. 4.1) is Dean of the College of Graduate Studies at the University of Toledo (Toledo). Amanda was born in Enfield, NC, a small town about fifteen miles from the North Carolina-Virginia border. Her father was a farmer and her mother was a housewife. Her father only had a sixth-grade education and did not read or write much. Her mother graduated from high school in Enfield. Her maternal grandfather was a child of a slave and her mother was one of twenty-two children from two wives. They lived on a farm owned by a man named Whitaker. As her mother’s family had been enslaved by the family that owned the farm, her last name was Whitaker. Amanda’s paternal grandfather was a businessman who owned his own farm, on the other side of town. He was also involved in the illegal production of moonshine. Amanda went to Unburden Elementary School in Enfield. Her first experience with school was dramatic, because she lived at the end of a dirt road and was really isolated from other families. The first day she went to kindergarten she saw all those little kids, and she was afraid because there were too many people there. But the daughter of her mother’s best friend was there and invited her to come in to the classroom. Her first science class was in general science in fourth or fifth grade. She was so fascinated, she changed her mind about her future career of secretary or teacher and decided on science. Amanda went to Enfield Middle school in Halifax County, then the second poorest county in the state. The school had only basic infrastructure for science classes. She remembers her middle school chemistry teacher, Ms. Crowley, who told the students to put a mercury thermometer in a cork and Amanda accidently stuck it in her hand. They did not have much in the school, but her teacher taught her what she could.