Research Guides: Global Development Studies: Background Information

The Importance of Background Information

Finding background information at the beginning of your research is especially important if you are unfamiliar with the subject area, or not sure from what angle to approach your topic. The types of information that a background search in a specialized reference work can provide include:

Broad overview of the subject
Definitions of the topic
Introduction to key concepts/issues
Names of people who are authorities in the subject field
Major dates and events
Keywords and subject-specific vocabulary terms that can be used for database searches
Bibliographies that lead to additional resources

In addition to the sources listed here, you can also search Omni using the keywords of your topic combined with the type of reference work you would like to locate (for example: encyclopedia, dictionaries, companion, bibliography, or handbook).

The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge and Power
A Dictionary of Civil Society, Philanthropy and the Third Sector
This guide to civil society provides a quick and easy reference to the key people, concepts and organizations of the third sector. It contains approximately 300 entries including all terms and concepts associated with civil society, as well as regional information.
Dictionary of Development: Third World Economy, Environment, Society
Includes short country reports, including statistics related to development indicators (note that the statistics provided are now historical). Provides topical short entries on concepts, terminology, organizations and persons related to international development, including directory information.
Encyclopedia of Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean Cultures
Provides short topical entries in alphabetical order by subject. Many of the entries are biographical, and longer entries provide bibliographical information.
Encyclopedia of Global Justice
The Encyclopedia is an international, interdisciplinary, and collaborative project, spanning all the relevant areas of scholarship related to issues of global justice, and edited and advised by leading scholars from around the world.
Encyclopedia of the Developing World
ISBN: 1579583881
With contributions from 251 scholars, this three volume set features approximately 750 entries related to issues facing the post-1945 developing world.
The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, 5 Volume Set
A comprehensive reference work on migration, comprising over 500 A-Z entries, and a prehistory section featuring over 50 thematic essays Includes contributions from a global and multi-disciplinary author team, from historians and anthropologists, to political scientists, economists, and geneticists Examines migration through world history rather than from a Western perspective, incorporating thematic discussions of key topics, detailed migration histories, biographies, and more.
Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History
This encyclopedia covers LGBTQ topics in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East, as well as North America, and takes an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, using film, literature, human rights, politics, landmark legislation, activism, the arts, language, sports, and historical events as points of entry into the content.
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Women's Issues Worldwide
This encyclopedia is arranged geographically, and discusses the status of women and their concerns by continent and country.
International Development Dictionary
Covers theoretical concepts in short entries. Organized alphabetically by subject.
International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology
Economic Sociology deals with the multiple and complex relations between economy and society. In particular, it focuses on the impact of social, political and cultural factors on economic behaviour. Entries are cross-referenced and carry compact bibliographies. There is a full index.
International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences
This Encyclopedia comprises 4,000 articles, commissioned by 52 Section Editors, and includes 90,000 bibliographic references as well as comprehensive name and subject indexes.
A Dictionary of Economics
Wide-ranging and authoritative, this fourth edition covers all aspects of economics, including economic theory as well as applied micro and macroeconomics. It is a useful dictionary for professional economists as well as students and teachers of economics, business and finance.
The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics
The Routledge Critical Dictionary of Global Economics
Long entries on topics in global economics, including graphical representations and mathematical equations.
Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women
This volume provides essay-length entries with bibliographical and author information. They are organized alphabetically by subject.

Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition
An encyclopedia with glossary, index of terms, index of proper names, index of subjects, and bibliography. Sets out the present state of our knowledge of the Islamic World from religion and history to politics and culture. Encompasses old Arabo-Islamic empire, Iran, Central Asia, India, Indonesia, the Ottoman Empire and all modern Islamic states.
Includes articles on: distinguished Muslims of every age and land; tribes and dynasties; crafts and sciences; political and religious institutions; the geography, ethnography, flora and fauna of the various countries; history, topography and monuments of the major towns and cities.

Palgrave Handbook of Disability and Citizenship in the Global South
This handbook questions, debates and subverts commonly held assumptions about disability and citizenship in the global postcolonial context.
Routledge Handbook of Sport for Development and Peace
This book covers a wide range of topics, including Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) structures, policies and funding streams, how SDP relates to human rights, social exclusion and corporate social responsibility, SDP and gender, SDP and disability, SDP and health, SDP and homelessness, and SDP and the environment.
Handbook of African Development
This handbook presents an extensive new overview of African development - past, present and future. It addresses key core themes and topics that are pertinent to the continent's development - including sections on history, health and food, politics, economics, rural and urban development, and development policy and practice.
Handbook of Environmental Economics
This volume answers key policy questions facing environmental agencies in developed and developing economies; integrates insights from economics and ecology; presents the latest on efforts to review and evaluate the new literatures on field; and provides the first substantive review of environmental macro economics.
Handbook on Growth and Sustainability
The handbook presents new contributions on topics such as degrowth, the debt-based financial system, cultural change, energy return on investment, shorter working hours and employment, and innovation and technology.
Routledge handbook of gender and environment
This handbook presents a comprehensive overview of the development of the field from early political critiques of the male domination of women and nature in the 1980s to the sophisticated intersectional and inclusive analyses of the present. Topics include sustainable development, climate change politics, queer ecology and interspecies ethics in the so-called Anthropocene.
Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics
The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics provides readers with insight into the central questions of development ethics, the main approaches to answering them, and areas for future research.
Development, Trade, and the WTO: a handbook
This handbook offers guidance on the design of trade policy reform, surveys key disciplines and the functioning of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and discusses numerous issues and options that confront developing countries in using international cooperation to improve domestic policy and obtain access to export markets.
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Tourism
This companion presents a comprehensive and critical overview of tourism studies. It includes sections on tourism and the environment, globalization, social theories, and policies.