Social Sciences Bibliographer Bill Olsen, Ph.D., is the co-editor of a new book published by Indiana University Press, Evil in Africa: Encounters with the Everyday. The book is co-edited by Walter E. A. van Beek of the African Studies Center in Leiden, Netherlands.
Evil in Africa includes 19 chapters written by anthropologists in the U.S., Europe and Africa, which explore the cultural meanings and social contexts of evil in everyday life within various African societies. The contributors to this volume seek to understand how Africans have defined and 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.
In addition to serving as librarian for all Georgetown programs related to international and foreign affairs, government, peace studies, national security and African studies, Olsen does significant original research on the peoples and cultures of Africa, particularly the Asante zone of Ghana. His work focuses on ethno-medicine, pluralistic forms of healing and medical practice, and on divination and its contingencies for medical therapy. He is an adjunct faculty member in African Studies and International Health.
