Cambodian ‘beer promotion women’ and corporate caution, recalcitrance or worse?

N 2000, WE BEGAN with students and members of a Cambodian non-governmental organisation (NGO) called SiRCHESI (Siem Reap Citizens for Health Education and Social Issues) to develop prevention programmes for women and others at risk for HIV/AIDS in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Siem Reap is the site of the Angkor Wat temple complex which attracted over 1,000,000 visitors in 2004, some of them ‘sexual tourists’. Lewinian Action Research and more recent versions of Participatory Action Research offered some guidelines for a community health intervention campaign. In a recursive feedback loop, psychological data about health attitudes and strategies for behaviour change are co-ordinated with clinical and epidemiological medical approaches; through focus groups and community meetings, interventions are conjointly discussed, designed, modified and prioritised with community members concerned about HIV/AIDS. Our local informants described one group