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

Dictionary of Civil Society, Philanthropy, and the Non-Profit Sector

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

Provides comprehensive coverage of "all relevant areas of scholarship related to issues of global justice, edited and advised by leading scholars from around the world."

The Encyclopaedia of Islam

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.

Encyclopedia of the Developing World

With contributions from 251 scholars, this three volume set features approximately 750 entries related to issues facing the post-1945 developing world.

Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration

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.

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.

The International Development Dictionary

Covers theoretical concepts in short entries. Organized alphabetically by subject.

International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioural Sciences

Oxford Dictionary of Economics

New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics

Routledge Critical Dictionary of Global Economics

Long entries on topics in global economics, including graphical representations and mathematical equations.

Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women : Global Women's Issues and Knowledge

Provides long entries, organized alphabetically by subject.

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.

Reference Platforms

In addition to searching your topic in specific reference works, you can also search across the following publisher platforms:

Oxford Reference Online

Sage Reference Online