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As a conceptual tool, effervescence offers a nuanced and complex explanation of forces for social change. Yet, it can be challenging to identify subject matter that spans the full implications of effervescence from embodied feeling to changes in social action over time. This study joins theories of effervescence with a unique set of primary historical records from a nineteenth-century religious utopian community in the United States to investigate whether effervescence might have a role in the creation, maintenance or decay of social ideals. As an explanation for social action, findings suggest that effervescence points to a link between embodied feeling, social ideals and institutional control – aspects of effervescence that offer avenues for future theoretical and empirical research.