Emotion, embodiment, and agency: The place of a social emotions perspective in the cross-disciplinary understanding of emotional processes

A social approach to emotion as defined here makes possible a deeper understanding of emotion's role in the mediation of bodily and sociocultural domains. This is accomplished, firstly, through the fact that such an approach gives emphasis to the role of social structure in the ontology of emotion, and thus to the import of emotion in understanding social processes. Secondly, a social approach allows for the articulation of the place of emotion in understanding how social life comes to be embodied, that is, how social life is grounded in bodily processes that are fundamental in the constitution of the "somatic" dimensions of social being. Thirdly, in that the social emotions approach makes explicit how emotion has not only a social-relational genesis but also social consequences, makes possible the understanding of the body as simultaneously object and agent in the social world, thus contributing to the delineation of the place of emotion in our understanding of action and agency, and of the relationship between agency and structure.