Divide & Conquer

“This is a provocative, clearly-written participant-ethnographic and mixed-methods longue durée study of Los Angeles gangs that documents the tragedy of racialized urban killing fields in the United States. Weide argues that racist law enforcement governance practices and the populist appeal of U.S. race-based identity politics blind the most vulnerable sectors of the surplus working class to their common political-material self-interests.”—Philippe Bourgois, author of In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio and coauthor of Righteous Dopefiend

“Divide & Conquer focuses on the agency of gang members and the imprisoned in order to highlight their experiences and analyses that allow them to engineer prison strikes for human rights, win concessions, and decrease violence and harm. With complex organizing, they build transracial/ethnic unity within dangerous California prisons. Their leadership challenges violent captivity to offer transracial peacemaking and solidarity strategies. Departing from popular abolitionist narratives, Divide & Conquer reminds us that we need transformative leadership from those inside prison and underground economies as they, and we, collectively challenge the racism, capitalism, poverty, exploitation, and dishonor that shape our alienation.”—Joy James, author of In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities

“Divide & Conquer is groundbreaking gang scholarship featuring a tremendous amount of historical background and 'insider' knowledge. Weide systematically analyzes and describes the black and brown tension among gangs in Los Angeles. The remarkable access Weide had to so many L.A. gang members and his ability to get them to speak about this sensitive issue are invaluable. This book certainly poses a challenge to the conventional gang and race/ethnicity literature.”—Randol Contreras, Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside, and author of The Stickup Kids: Race, Drugs, Violence, and the American Dream

"[A]n excellent ethnographic case-study.... Divide and Conquer offers a compelling read and conceptual rethink of gang identities and violence in contemporary urban landscapes not just in America but across the capitalist world.... Divide and Conquer is [a] ground-breaking study that challenges conventional conceptualizations and approaches to the gang and race/ethnicity literature. You know it is a good book when it draws you into the scholarship and makes you question your own conceptual approach to studying gangs."—Ethnic and Racial Studies

"[Weide's] analysis lands like a Molotov cocktail, exploding the racialist ideologies that give shape not only to much contemporary scholarship, political chatter, and community activism, but—most importantly to the author—also to the gang dynamics pervading the streets of Los Angeles and the prisons of California.... Divide & Conquer is an insider participant ethnography spanning a decade of formal fieldwork and perhaps three decades of lived experience and observation.... Gang members are lucky to have Weide as a comrade in their ongoing struggles; everyone else is lucky to have him as a scholarly documentarian of these important efforts." —Social Forces