Against a background of rising adult mortality and morbidity in the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub‐Saharan Africa, this paper provides both quantitative and qualitative evidence for the existence of a largely neglected group of young people with increased responsibility for caregiving. Using questionnaire surveys, focus groups, storyboards and in‐depth interviews in three studies across Southern and Eastern Africa some young people in Lesotho, Tanzania and Zimbabwe are found to devote considerable time and energy to caring for sick members of their households. Examination of the tasks carried out by these youngsters finds them to be burdened beyond usual familial and societal expectations of children's ‘normal’ contributions to the reproduction of households via domestic chores and suchlike. It is concluded that these young people can be described as ‘young carers’. The three studies are presented to illuminate different socio‐spatial aspects of caregiving by young people. First, using qualitative data from Lesotho the range of caring tasks young caregivers perform for care recipients – usually a grandmother, parent, or sibling – is identified. Second, the impact caregiving responsibilities have on children's primary school attendance is examined using survey data from Tanzania. Third, the wider negative and positive impacts of caregiving including loss of friends and gaining of emotional maturity for young carers and their households is explored with in‐depth individual interviews from Zimbabwe. Finally, suggestions are made for further research to deepen understanding of the geographies of caring within the context of the population geographies of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub‐Saharan Africa and beyond. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Women valued being encouraged and supported to labour without using pharmacological pain relief by midwives with whom they developed a trusting relationship throughout pregnancy. Features of midwifery approaches to pain in labour and relational continuity of care have important implications for promoting normal birth and a positive experience of pregnancy, labour, and birth for women.

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The ongoing instability in Argentina that emerged from the December 2001 uprising in Buenos Aires (the “Argentinazo”) has been one of the highest profile examples in recent years of reaction to the economic “disciplining” of a country. For enthusiasts, this reaction has been resistance, an upsurge against neoliberalisation by people conscious of what was happening and with alternative conceptions of how things should be (Aufheben 2003; Carrera and Cotarelo 2003; Dinerstein 2002; Galeano 2002; Harman 2002; “IM” 2002; Klein 2003a, 2003b; MAS 2002; Ollier 2003). Subaltern resistances such as those developed by Argentines have been the subject of much geographical writing on resistance in recent years (Castells 1997; Leyshon, Lee and Williams 2003; Pile and Keith 1997; Sharp et al 2000). This paper addresses the range of actions, or “action repertoire”(Tarrow 1998:20–21), of the Argentinazo to examine the extent to which alternative material and discursive “convergence spaces”(Routledge 2003) of political engagement emerged both as resistance to, and articulating a coherent alternative to, neoliberalism.

The determinants of birth intervals have been a focus of attention because of the strong relationship between birth intervals, mortality and fertility. This paper criticises the conventional hazard model approach to the determinants of birth intervals on the grounds of, ®rst, the widespread assumption that birth intervals are planned and go according to plan, and secondly, a common failure to situate birth intervals within the social structures in which they take place. Indepth interviews with four Punjabi couples about their birth interval related experiences are used to illustrate an alternative approach, which centres on an exploration of the roots of each action in¯uencing birth intervals. This exploration takes into account that not all human actions are planned to maximise the actor's bene®t, but that they can also be normative, habitual, or emotion-driven; and it disentangles the two-way relationship between birth interval related actions and social structures. Birth intervals are thought to be unlikely to develop according to a master plan because of their complexity, which stems from the considerable number of actions and actors involved in creating them.

This paper addresses two frequent overgeneralisations in the orphanhood literature in Africa: about the 'vulnerability' of children and about 'orphans'. It specifically examines school attendance, given the common presumption that orphans are less likely to attend school than non-orphans. Using survey data from two regions in Tanzania