Sexual risk behaviour accounts for a large number of opportunities for acquiring HIV infection, and alcohol use has been shown to increase high-risk sexual behaviour. Moreover, the social dynamics that surround alcohol use, sexual risk behaviour and HIV infection and interactions between these issues warrant a search for alternative ways of dealing with the problem in diverse sociocultural settings, if intervention is to be effective. Only by unravelling the social dynamics of alcohol use-related sexual risk behaviour within particular cultural settings can this be achieved.