This chapter focuses on the social life of play. As the patterning of human relationships, social context shapes play by offering behavioral formats or directives that both support and restrict our actions. Such directives are manifested in countless situations and at different levels of abstraction; they constitute the social reality of our lives. In that context, the chapter examines play as a “social construction of reality”—that is, a process of reality construction and maintenance. It discusses three levels of social reality: self-identity, social relationships, and social structure. It also considers George Herbert Mead's play and game stages of development, play as performance and presentation, Georg Simmel's play form of association, Erving Goffman's theory of frame utilization, social functions of play, and play's relationship to power and privilege. The chapter concludes by revisiting Pierre Bourdieu's argument that similarly situated groups of people develop their own tastes and style of life that afford them personal satisfaction and easeful interaction.