If peasants are people ‘existentially involved in cultivation’,18 then the ecology of freedom (‘play farming’, in short) is precisely the opposite condition. The ecology of freedom describes the proclivity of human societies to move (freely) in and out of farming; to farm without fully becoming farmers; raise crops and animals without surrendering

for much of human history, the geographical range in which most human beings were operating was actually shrinking. Palaeolithic ‘culture areas’ spanned continents. Mesolithic and Neolithic culture zones still covered much wider areas than the home territory of most contemporary ethno-linguistic groups (what anthropologists refer to as ‘cultures’).

While the free peoples of North America’s eastern seaboard nearly all adopted at least some food crops, those of the West Coast uniformly rejected them. Indigenous peoples of California were not pre-agricultural. If anything, they were anti-agricultural.

per stirpes,

almost all these ‘classic’ theoretical formulations of the last century started off from exactly this assumption: that any large and complex society necessarily required a state. The real bone of contention was, why?

The second is the one we are living in now. When it began, around 12,000 years ago, people were already present on all the world’s continents, and in many different kinds of environment. Geologists call this period the Holocene, from Greek holos (entire), kainos (new).

Communal tenure, ‘open-field’ principles, periodic redistribution of plots and co-operative management of pasture are not particularly exceptional and were often practised for centuries in the same locations.

We would like to suggest that these three principles – call them control of violence, control of information, and individual charisma – are also the three possible bases of social power.

Ever since Mesolithic times, the broad tendency has been for human beings to further subdivide, coming up with endless new ways to distinguish themselves from their neighbours.