Book Review: Social Law 4.0. New Approaches for Ensuring and Financing Social Security in the Digital Age by Ulrich Becker and Olga Chesalina

Abstract

an impact on both poverty and human rights. In this part, authors examine meta-issues that exacerbate poverty and human rights violations such as climate change, corruption, conflict (zones), technological advances, and corporate/private actors’ disruptions versus their lack of (sufficient) liability. This impressive collection of chapters lacks, regrettably, a concluding section that brings together the most relevant findings. Granted, drawing concluding remarks from such a diverse and broad take on poverty and human rights is nothing short of a challenge if one wants to avoid unnecessary generalisations and over-simplifications of such sensitive issues. Regardless, a final closing chapter could have offered some needed guiding general remarks to inspire both policymakers and future research. These, however, can be found in the respective chapters. The research handbook presents an important collection of insights on crucial ties between poverty and human rights from an impressive interdisciplinary exercise. This is an essential contribution for researchers and academics to enrich their understanding of poverty, its causes and how the phenomenon progressively transforms. It sheds light on a variety of dimensions of poverty that are currently overlooked from a human rights discourse. As a consequence, it is an important reference for future research and policymaking that should be used to inspire forthcoming contributions and avenues for pursuing the eradication of poverty. Moreover, it brings this impressive collection of contributions in a very timely manner. Amidst a global pandemic, which the authors deem one among many reasons to be pessimistic about advances towards poverty eradication, the handbook advocates for confronting poverty as the core human rights issue that it is. Compared to other volumes on this topic, the research handbook offers a more ambitious collection that is able to address poverty and human rights from a variety of fields and disciplines. This allows the volume to cover both intersectional and structural issues. The novelty of this volume also lies in its duality: it uses the human rights approach to poverty both as a foundation and as the basis for its critique in many of its contributions. Hopefully, this volume will serve its purpose and inspire policymakers and governments alike to confront the urgent a long-standing need to eradicate poverty and significantly reducing inequality.