In this issue there are five articles concerned with drinking and informal social control. Differences in how society reacts to drinking and alcohol-related harms can often be explained by cultural variation in societies' use of formal rules. But not all rules are explicitly expressed, which is especially true of those that underlie studies included here: those involving reactions of spouses or partners, other family members and close friends, to a person's drinking and alcohol problems. In the accumulating literature on drinking and informal social control, many mechanisms of social pressure to drink less or, as in one study here, to drink more have been found to be cross-cultural. In spite of this universality, it is reasonable to expect variations of the intensity of social pressure between cultures.The delicate balance and interplay on the one hand of respecting autonomy of adults while on the other, at least in certain instances, attempting to provide feedback on the behavior of family or friends, involves a complex pattern of traditions, norms and other social values. The articles in this issue aim to examine how mechanisms of social control of drinking are linked to gender differences, regional views on the position of alcohol in society and countries' varying economic situations.All the articles included in this issue originate from the project, Gender, Alcohol and Culture: An International Study (GENACIS). GENACIS is a collaborative international project affiliated with the Kettil Bruun Society for Social and Epidemiological Research on Alcohol and coordinated by a steering committee made up of GENACIS partners from the University of North Dakota, the University of Southern Denmark, the Free University of Berlin, the World Health Organization, and the Swiss Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Drug Problems, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Ontario, Canada, the Alcohol Research Group, Emeryville California and the University of Melbourne, Victoria. The strength of this project is that the data are drawn from low- and middle-income countries as well as rich ones. Such a worldwide sample of countries representing Europe, Africa, North and Latin America, and Asia offers a fine opportunity to study informal control of drinking and its consequences in a wide range of cultural contexts.Participants in the GENACIS project were faced with some methodological challenges. The project set out with a common core questionnaire and an optional extended questionnaire to be used in general populations' surveys. For practical reasons, not all countries used the same questions or the response categories. Therefore, in the comparative articles in this collection, the number of dataseis used varied from 12 to 18. Criteria for inclusion in each study depended on whether the datasets were available at the time when the comparative analysis was carried out, and on whether the research questions posed in the particular article involved items included in the respective national surveys.As a whole, the studies in this issue are thematically very close, but they vary in approach and methodology. Marja Holmila and her coauthors examined between-country variation in how family members attempt to influence each other to drink less. In all studied countries, women reported less pressure than men, and informal pressure was exerted most often by the spouse or sexual partner. However, other family members were also involved. The authors conclude that informal pressure to drink less by family members is on one hand an expression of social and family problems, caused by heavy drinking, especially in the economically less developed countries, suggesting alcohol-related economic deprivation as an influence.Klara Selin and her associates examined how togetherness of drinking, i.e., the proportion of drinking occasions spent together with the partner, is connected to pressure from partner to drink less. …