Within social psychology emotion has been studied either as a collection of discrete states or as the product of the cognitive interpretation of arousal. These traditions have accepted that feeling resides inside individuals and is controlled by social structures. This paper argues an alternative position; that emotion is expressive of the relationship of individuals to society. Insofar as individual feeling is subject to articulation it has form; to the extent that social systems are value‐laden they embody feeling. Using these arguments a conceptual framework is outlined within which emotion is treated as a universal feature of the coordination of individual and social life, within which its degree and form of expression can be understood. From this perspective, questions of the mode of articulation of feeling, the legitimacy of emotional expression and the place of mental and physical imagery in affective settings become central to an understanding, not only of particular emotions, but of social relations in genera