Chapter 3 commences the task of staging encounters withbiosocial power in the form of social practices. Thechapter begins by reviewing Norbert Elias’s TheCivilising Process, as well as more recent Eliasianperspectives on a ‘de-civilising’ process, usingthis literature as an interpretative lens incommencing a genealogy of playgrounds. Examined as abiosocial technology, the playground is shown tooriginate as a pedagogical practice that (to borrowfrom governmentality theory) attempted to act uponthe actions of children through a blend of carefullycalibrated techniques, bounded space andpurpose-built equipment, the strategic objective ofwhich was to prefigure the future. The empiricalfocus of the chapter is early nineteenth centuryBritain and Progressive Era America.