Book Review: Social Law 4.0. New Approaches for Ensuring and Financing Social Security in the Digital Age by Ulrich Becker and Olga Chesalina
| Author | Kristina Koldinská |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13882627221077122 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
volume is dedicated to addressing external structural barriers in governance mechanisms that have
an impact on both poverty and human rights. In this part, authors examine meta-issues that exacer-
bate 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 contri-
bution 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 ref-
erence for future research and policymaking that should be used to inspire forthcoming contribu-
tions 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 eradica-
tion, 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 col-
lection 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.
ORCID iD
Ane Aranguiz https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2413-9504
Ulrich Becker, and Olga Chesalina, (eds.), Social Law 4.0. New Approaches for Ensuring and Financing Social
Security in the Digital Age, 2021, Baden-Baden, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 393 pp, ISBN 978-3-7489-1200-2.
Reviewed by: Kristina Koldinská ,Faculty of Law, Charles University Prague
DOI: 10.1177/13882627221077122
Industry 4.0 has been discussed for quite a long time, especially from an economic point of view, as
part of the attempt to understand the near future of our countries and the entire globalised world. So
far, there have been many publications and studies dealing with the consequences of digitalisation
Book Reviews 69
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