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Abstract
The debilitating impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in orphaning children is very far from even. The central aim of this article is to examine geographical aspects of AIDS orphanhood by focusing on the interfaces between distributional and ecological perspectives. The study builds on an extensive review of literature, and maps are constructed based on data from international organizations' databases. The human ecological metaphor is employed to systematize competing views on the sustainability and foster-giving capacity of the traditional social system. It is argued that the map of contemporary orphanhood is not the replica of the AIDS epidemic alone, but is also plotted on contours of poverty, inequality, age-based deprivations, and marginalization. Due to spatial variations in adult mortality and the time-gap between infection and AIDS-related deaths, the geography of AIDS orphanhood is far more complex than what adult seroprevalence suggests. This geography is also likely to remain fluid, especially at smaller spatial scales and between rural and urban, considering the multiple migrations of orphans and dispersal of their care-giving families. The study is informed by the policy implications of culturally distinct conceptualizations of orphanhood, and tries to locate the gaps in research that require broader investigation.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Asbjørn Aase, Anne Trine Kjørholt and Jens Qvortrup for the valuable and timely feedbacks on earlier versions of this article. The article has also been improved by the helpful comments of the referees, Stuart Aitken and Thokozani Kanyere. I am also grateful to Barbara Rogers, and to Yirgalem Mahiteme for helping me to construct the maps using map-viewer techniques.