Summary
New materialism is a movement in contemporary philosophy that treats matter – bodies, objects, environments – as active in making the world, not inert. The term was coined independently by Manuel DeLanda and Rosi Braidotti in the late 1990s, in reaction to an emphasis on language and discourse. It resists a single definition, but its thinkers reject hard lines between nature and culture, subject and object, human and non-human, and see agency as spread across many interacting forces. Karen Barad and Jane Bennett are among its most cited authors. Critics such as Andreas Malm say that blurring humanity and nature leaves it little use for climate action.
Rationale
Philosophical backing for something we put more plainly: that “the social and material world continually reproduces” our deeper assumptions. If matter acts, what Part 2 calls the ‘Built’ zone is doing cultural work.