Catastrophe and community empowerment: The group formulations of aberfan's survivors

The residents of Aberfan, a coal-mining village in South Wales, endured a terrible catastrophe which took the lives of 144 residents, 104 of them schoolchildren between the ages of 8 and 10. Twenty years after the catastrophe, there are group formulations, expressing the grief of the community and asserting its values in a manner inspired by the catastrophe, that resemble forms and stages of empowerment. This examination of them extends our knowledge of the process of empowerment. First, group formulations of a catastrophe are described as a mechanism of empowerment, resembling much of what we know about the stages of empowerment. Second, interviews with community leaders are described that indicate the limits of empowerment; specifically, that the assertion of community values is, in part, a protest of the political and economic factors which contributed to the catastrophe and continued to impede the well-being of the community. The group formulations to deal with these factors and to establish a different set of political and economic factors demonstrate the important constraints on empowerment as a process.