the fate of early farming societies often hinged less on ‘ecological imperialism’ than on what we might call – to adapt a phrase from the pioneer of social ecology, Murray Bookchin – an ‘ecology of freedom’.17 By this we mean something quite specific. 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;
