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In this article, I trace the history of focus groups as a method and consider how they produce and filter knowledge, interaction, and engagement; their nature as communicative settings; and their political-ideological associations. I analyze focus groups conducted for a primary health care project in Kenya that involved health officials, Washington, DC- and Nairobi-based staff, a U.S. photographer, a U.S. anthropologist, and local women from the project area. This case provides insights into knowledge production in the context of the transnational development industry, how anthropological methods are incorporated and represented in the process, and the epistemological grounds of ethnographic methods. [research methods, knowledge production, focus groups, development, Kenya] DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01286.x

Book cover illustrations and photographs have the power to project an implied image to readers that often has nothing to do with the book's content, or worse, misleads people as to the scope and political position of the book. This is especially problematic for ethnographers, whose even-handed treatment of a subject can be undermined by the use of a certain photo on their book's cover. For presenters of foreign cultures, the problem is compounded due to racial and sexual factors, further clouded by notions of 'primitive' societies.

This article looks at shifting gender relations among Okiek in Kenya as they have diversified their forest-based hunting and honey-gathering economy and examines the role of initiation ceremonies in creating and legitimating the structure of Okiek gender relations. Okiek gender relations are founded on a contradiction between complementarity at the level of household production and hierarchy in access to and control of material and social resources. Over time, that contradiction has sharpened. [cultural identity, gender relations, ceremony and ritual, Kenya, historical approaches, hunters and gatherers, Okiek]