Department of Sociology

Clarence Y. H. Lo
Associate Professor

Clarence Lo received his Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley and has been with our department since 1987. His specialty interests include politcal sociology, social movements, theory, urban sociology, and qualitative/historical methods.

Research Interests

I have written about the conservative and religious fundamentalist movements which began with the “New Right” in the 1980s. My book Small Property versus Big Government on the property tax revolt that culminated in California’s Proposition 13, was based on over one hundred oral history interviews with neighborhood activists. I examined the formation of class alliances in suburban communities that led to the triumph of a pro-business program of tax reduction that has become the staple of Republican presidential administrations. The book received honorable mention for the Robert Park award, given by the Community Section of the American Sociological Association. My theoretical work in this area has conceptualized social movement resources as embedded in territorial communities, in contrast to market-managerial approaches to resource mobilization theory.

My work on the consequences of fiscal conservative movements and politics has led me to examine social policy issues, and the role not only of social movements, but of business interests, right-wing think tanks, and mass media. I have been tracking the development of a conservative agenda for social policy following the watershed defeat of the Clinton plan for health care reform. I have examined how the media coverage of health-care reform and a media- constructed groundswell of public opinion against Clinton contributed to the defeat of the Clinton plan. My research was part of a volume that I co-edited with Michael Schwartz, Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda, which included contributions from Frances Fox Piven, Jill Quadagno, Judith Stacey and others.

I have continued researching media coverage of social and economic issues, and am now working on a book on how corporate fraud and crime is portrayed in mass media. The coverage changed its focus over time, and eventually functioned to reassure Americas that corporate crises and malfeasance have been satisfactorily resolved. Initially the media’s emphasis on Enron’s transgressions upheld a standard --that corporations should accurately disclose their financial condition-- essential for investor confidence in the functioning of financial markets. News reports and condemnation of Enron’s deviance thus reinforced market values. Later, the prevailing news coverage conveyed a traditionalist, tough-on-crime orientation, espoused by President George W. Bush, that argued for aggressive investigation and prosecution, swift justice, and heavy penalties to deter corporate crime. Prosecuting a few top executives has symbolically reassured the public that something has been done, despite the absence of new regulatory and reform legislation as in the 1930s.

In studying the formulation of government policy, I have also been led to examine the power of business elites and the constraints of a global capitalist economy. This work is grounded in theories of the state and advanced capitalism, articulated in a co-authored the article, “Recent Developments in Marxist Theories of the Capitalist State.” This article was associated with the subsequent development of much critical theorizing, which I analyzed in a 2002 article. I am also interested in how global energy conglomerates and the militarized politics of petroleum acquisition have led to the failure of the United States government to adequately respond to the potentially catastrophic environmental problems of global warming.

My recreational research is a participant-observation and interview study of the surfing culture of Malibu, California, and the racial, ethnic, and gender conflicts apparent in its development from historical roots in Hawaii. I also examine how surfing culture and its nomadic active subjects have themselves been transformed and re-created by a post-colonial dissolution of the dichotomy of Beach Boys and Duke Kahanamoku. This process of hybridization, exemplified by the posthumous construction of narratives of the life of Hawaiian surfer Eddie Aikau, must be understood in the context of the global marketing of surfwear fashion commodities and the global hyperinflation of costal real estate values.

Graduate students whose committees I have chaired have completed research on social movements such as the midwifery movement, the movement for single-payer health care, protests against Wal-Mart sites, the student movement in Spain, the men’s movement, and policies such as welfare reform and economic development incentives in Missouri.

Selected Publications

“Marxist Models of the Capitalist State and Politics,” Research in Political
      Sociology: Theoretical Directions in Political Sociology for the 21st
      Century, vol 11 (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, Ltd.), 2002, pp. 197-231.

(With Michael Schwartz, eds.), Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda
      (Oxford, England and Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1998

Small Property Versus Big Government: Social Origins of the Property Tax
      Revolt. (Second edition, revised and expanded paperback.) Berkeley, Los
      Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1995.

"Communities of Challengers in Social Movement Theory." In Aldon Morris and
      Carol  Muller, eds., The Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven,
      Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992, pp. 224-27.

"Countermovements and Conservative Movements in the Contemporary U.S."
      Pp. 107-134 in R.H. Turner and J.F. Short, Jr. (eds.), Annual Review of
      Sociology, vol. 8 (1982). Palo Alto, Ca.: Annual Reviews, Inc.

(With David Gold and Erik Olin Wright) "Recent Developments in Marxist
      Theories of the Capitalist State." Monthly Review, vol. 27. Part I in October,
      1975, pp. 29-43. Part 2 in November 1975, pp. 36-51.

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University of Missouri
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