Ethnographic research demonstrates ethical resilience practices in a rural Sufi community, suggesting new ecological futures.
This paper develops the concept of ontological resilience through an ethnographic study of a Sufi‐inspired rural community in southwestern Türkiye. Based on eight months of fieldwork, it examines how resilience is enacted not as a technical adaptation but as an ethical and spiritual practice of living with vulnerability. Participants framed resilience through four interwoven dimensions: collective care in sharing labour and resources; ecological atonement in humility towards land, water and non‐human beings; affective labour in cultivating patience, love and hope; and more‐than‐human solidarity in recognising other species as companions in endurance. The findings show that resilience is ambivalent rather than harmonious: communal life entails disagreements, uneven responsibilities and economic hardship, yet these frictions become opportunities for ethical cultivation. By situating resilience within a Sufi cosmology of interconnectedness, the paper extends critical resilience studies, highlights the role of spiritual ontologies and offers resources for reimagining socio‐ecological futures in times of uncertainty.
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Özge Can Doğmuş (2026) studied this question.
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