William C. Olsen, Walter E. A. van Beek, and the contributors to this volume seek to understand how Africans have confronted evil around them. Grouped around notions of evil as a cognitive or experiential problem, evil as malevolent process, and evil as an inversion of justice, these essays investigate what can be accepted and what must be condemned in order to evaluate being and morality in African cultural and social contexts. These studies of evil entanglements take local and national histories and identities into account, including state politics and civil war, religious practices, Islam, gender, and modernity.

Introduction: African Notions of Evil: The Chimera of Justice Walter E.A. van Beek and William C. Olsen Part I. Evil and the State/War 1. Political Evil: Witchcraft from the Perspective of the Bewitched Sónia Silva 2. Untying Wrongs in Northern Uganda Susan Reynolds Whyte, Lotte Meinert, Julaina Obika 3. The Evil of Insecurity in South Sudan: Violence and Impunity in Africa's Newest State Jok Madut Jok 4. Genocide, Evil and Human Agency: The Concept of Evil in Rwandan Explanations of the 1994 Genocide Jennie E. Burnet 5. Politics and Cosmographic Anxiety: Kongo and Dagbon Compared Wyatt MacGaffey Part II. Evil and Religion 6. Ambivalence and the Work of the Negative Among the Yaka René Devisch 7. Azé and the Incommensurable Léocadie Ekoué with Judy Rosenthal 8. Evil and the Art of Revenge in the Mandara Mountains Walter E.A. van Beek 9. Distinctions in the Imagination of Harm in Contemporary Mijikenda Thought: The Existential Challenge of Majini Diane Ciekawy 10. Haunted by Absent Others: Movements of Evil in a Nigerian City Ulrika Trovalla 11. Attributions of Evil among Haalpulaaren, Senegal Roy Dilley 12. Reflections regarding Good and Evil: The Complexity of Words in Zanzibar Kjersti Larsen 13. Constructing Moral Personhood: The Moral Test in Tuareg Sociability as a Commentary on Honor and Dishonor Susan J. Rasmussen 14. The Gender of Evil: Maasai Experiences and Expressions Dorothy L. Hodgson Part III. Evil and Modernity 15. Neo-Cannibalism, Military Bio-Politics, and the Problem of Human Evil Nancy Scheper-Hughes 16. Theft and Evil in Asante William C. Olsen 17. Sorcery after Socialism: Liberalization and Anti Witchcraft Practices in Southern Tanzania Maia Green 18. Transatlantic Pentecostal Demons in Maputo Linda van de Kamp 19. The Meaning of "Apartheid" and the Epistemology of Evil Adam Ashforth