Rituals of Resilience: Mutual Aid and the Reconstitution of Agency in Constant Crisis

Ecological crises now displace growing numbers of individuals and communities. Many seek refuge in societies that greet them with ambivalence or hostility. Public discourse frequently minimizes their suffering. This paper examines how constant crisis overwhelms individual and institutional moral capacity, producing a widespread sense of diminished agency among both displaced populations and those who encounter them. Drawing on Mary Douglas’s concept of “matter out of place,” I show how dominant narratives render displaced suffering morally illegible, deepening the trauma of exclusion. I analyze mutual aid food-sharing initiatives as counter-rituals that respond to exhaustion by creating spaces for collective action. These gatherings reject bureaucratic state aid and cultivate a horizontal ethos of kinship. By transforming public spaces into temporary commons, shared meals restore the capacity to respond through tangible forms of solidarity in the present.