Description
Scholars across disciplines acknowledge that resilience develops not from extraordinary human capacity but from the dynamic interplay of psychological and sociocultural factors embedded in ordinary daily life. Research among indigenous people and communities living in conflict zones show resilience emerges from both conservation of local ways of being, and from everyday acts of active resistance. Literature has attended less carefully to the specific case of women who absorb the effects of prolonged conflicts and are burdened with caregiving and maintaining community relationships? Using the work of cultural anthropologists on "violences of everyday" and the resilience in cultural contexts, this research examines how Nagorno-Karabakh women’s mundane daily activities and life-affirming beliefs empower them to build resilience amid war and displacement. The ethnographic fieldwork was conducted between September-October 2024 and in August 2025 in Armenia where they are currently sheltered. What emerges is a culturally generated resilience rooted in everyday practices and narratives of mothering, mourning, and cooking that defy geopolitical remapping and contest the politics of cultural erasure.