Reference sources and scholarly books can provide a good overview of a topic. Look for literature review chapters and/or bibliographies that can point you to other books and articles that specifically address your research question.
This is not an exhaustive list. Search Tripod for <your topic> AND (companion OR handbook OR guide OR encyclopedia) to find more.
The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development (2016)
CQ Press Guide to Radical Politics in the United States (2016)
A Citizen's Guide to U. S. Elections (2016)
The Oxford Companion to American Politics (2012)
New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity
by
Cultural changes over the past two decades have led to a proliferation of new social movements in Europe and the United States. New social movements such as ecology, peace, ethnicity, New Age philosophies, alternative medicine, and gender and sexual identity are among those that are emerging to challenge traditional categories in social movement theory. Synthesizing classic and modern perspectives the contributors help to redefine the field of social movements and advance an understanding of them through cross-cultural research, comparison with older movements, and an examination of the dimensions of identity individual, collective, and melding of the two. "
Globalization and Social Movements: Islamism, Feminism, and the Global Justice Movement
by
This clear and concise book examines social movements and transnational networks in the context of globalization in all its forms—economic, political, cultural, and technological alike. Deftly combining nuanced theory with rich empirical examples, leading scholar Valentine M. Moghadam focuses especially on three transnational social movements—Islamism, feminism, and global justice. Now updated to explore the European anti-austerity protests, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street, the book considers the ways in which these socio-political protests were affected especially by the role of young people and social networking media. The book also includes a new chapter on the democratic nature of social movements, or the ways in which social movements contribute to democratization at both national and global levels. Defining globalization as a complex process in which the movement of capital, peoples, organizations, movements, and ideas takes on an increasingly international form, the author shows how growing physical and electronic mobility has helped to create dynamic global social movements. Exploring the historical roots of Islamism, feminism, and global justice, the book also shows how these movements have been stimulated by relatively recent globalization processes. Moghadam examines similarities and differences among the three movements, along with internal differentiation within each. Her argument is informed by feminist, world-systems, world polity, and social movement theories in a seamlessly integrated framework that will be essential reading for all students of globalization.
