{"id":12568,"date":"2021-11-08T12:29:51","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T19:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12568"},"modified":"2021-11-08T12:43:24","modified_gmt":"2021-11-08T19:43:24","slug":"an-offer-to-buy-the-pomegranate-and-other-pagan-studies-scams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12568","title":{"rendered":"An Offer to Buy the Pomegranate, and Other Pagan Studies Scams"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Statues of Communist leader Mao Zhedong in various Chinese temples (Bitter Winter<\/i>).<\/p><\/div>\n

Periodically I receive these emails, usually in the business-school dialect of babu English<\/a>. Academic publishing, apparently, is full of scammy stuff like this.((I have also encountered them in real estate and in regard to mineral rights.))<\/p>\n

Dear Editor\/Publisher,<\/p>\n

Hope this mail finds you in best!<\/p>\n

I am writing down this mail as a\u00a0follow\u00a0up\u00a0in reference to the acquisition proposal I had sent recently.\u00a0I request you to revert back and let us know if we can hope to take this forward.<\/p>\n

Please feel free to get back to us with your valuable suggestions\/queries.<\/p>\n

Hoping for a positive response from your end.<\/p>\n

Best regards,
\nChia Appu<\/p>\n

M&A Consultant
\nJCFCorp
\nSingapore | India | UK | US
\nMobile\/Whatsapp: +44 7451248959
\nwebsite:\u00a0www.jcfcorp.com<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not the first, won’t be the last. <\/strong>If I set the price at US $500,000, could I string “Chia Appu” on for a bit? The only problem there is that I do not own The Pomegranate<\/em>; Equinox Publishing does.<\/a> I would need to take the money and move somewhere that has no extradition treaty<\/a> with the UK.<\/p>\n

Academia has its scams, all designed for people willing to trade money for shortcuts.<\/strong> “Diploma mills<\/a>” have a hoary tradition, of course.<\/p>\n

Sadly, I lost a friend over one of these shortcuts.<\/strong> “R.” had written a couple of articles for Pomegranate <\/em>in the past, and he was good in his field. He then proposed another article, which appeared ready to publish \u2014 except that he wanted to list this Chinese professor as co-author.<\/p>\n

Pagan studies is a fairly small world, and I had never heard of this man. I looked him up at [well-known Chinese university], and there he was, in the Dept. of Communist Studies or something like that.<\/p>\n

It was clear to me that the Chinese professor had had nothing to do with writing the article, which was based on fieldwork in Western Europe. He was just being offered the chance to pad his c.v. in return for some other favor for R. \u2014 like a non-resident teaching position?((R. is lucky that he was not required to live there, given a certain well-known disease outbreak.))<\/p>\n

And there was more to the deal.<\/strong> [Well-known Chinese university] was supposedly starting a center for the study of new religious movements. The university was ready to “throw money at” the center’s projects.<\/p>\n

If I were willing to designate their center as a “sponsor” of The Pomegranate <\/em>and “put some Chinese names on the editorial board . . .\u00a0 the arrangement [would be] more than nominally profitable [for you].”((R. had his own journal, which I am suppose now has some Chinese professors on the editorial board.))<\/p>\n

And there was no doubt that [Well-known Chinese university] had the cash.<\/p>\n

There it was, a naked bribe. An odd\u00a0 experience. Had I been as financially shaky as R. thought I was \u2014 as financially shaky as he himself had often been until later in his career \u2014 I might have been more tempted. Sorry, professor of Communist studies, you are not going to buy your way in Pagan studies that easily.<\/p>\n

I said no, and R. cut me off completely.<\/p>\n

Something chilling occurred to me later<\/strong>. The\u00a0 incident was about five years ago. Since then, the mainland Chinese government has been cracking down on religion \u2014 all religions. The online journal Bitter Winter <\/em>has carried many articles<\/a> on the repression of not just “foreign” religions, mainly Islam<\/a> and Christianity, in the People’s Republic, but also Buddhist and Taoist temples, new Chinese religious movements, and even family and clan memorial halls that go back for centuries.<\/p>\n

All of them threaten President Xi Though<\/em>t, apparently. All you can worship is Communism.<\/a><\/p>\n

So if [major Chinese University] was preparing to study new reliigious movements, was that just part of a plan to wipe them out? There are predecents for that sort of thinking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Periodically I receive these emails, usually in the business-school dialect of babu English. Academic publishing, apparently, is full of scammy stuff like this.((I have also encountered them in real estate and in regard to mineral rights.)) Dear Editor\/Publisher, Hope this mail finds you in best! I am writing down this mail as a\u00a0follow\u00a0up\u00a0in reference to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[137,203,275,299,7],"class_list":["post-12568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-china","tag-new-religious-movements","tag-pagan-studies","tag-publishing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3gI","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":764,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=764","url_meta":{"origin":12568,"position":0},"title":"We have a Pagan Studies series!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"With Barb Davy's Introduction to Pagan Studies, we now have three books in Rowman & Littlefield's Pagan Studies series. And three of something truly is a \"series,\" right?Tag: Pagan Studies","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=31","url_meta":{"origin":12568,"position":1},"title":"The Pomegranate is reborn!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 4, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"After a hiatus of nearly two years while we sought a new publisher (a process that began at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in Denver in 2001), The Pomegranate: The Journal of Pagan Studies has a new publisher and will resume print publication in May 2004.As the new\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":390,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=390","url_meta":{"origin":12568,"position":2},"title":"Some Pagan Publishing Gossip","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 6, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Sarah Pike's new book, New Age and Neopagan Religions in America, just landed on my desk with instructions to review it for Nova Religio. Given that many contemporary Pagans are ambivalent at best about the \"New Age\" movement, it will be interesting to see how she sorts out and categorizes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2005\/03\/BARBIE.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":905,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=905","url_meta":{"origin":12568,"position":3},"title":"Pomegranate 9.1 (June 2007)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Contents of the newest issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies:\u2022 Marisol Charbonneau, \"The Melting Cauldron: Ethnicity, Diversity, and Identity in a Contemporary Pagan Subculture.\"\u2022 Carole Cusack, \"The Goddess Eostre: Bede's Text and Contemporary Pagan Tradition(s).\"\u2022 Victor Schnirelman, \"Ancestral Wisdom and Ethnic Nationalism: A View from Eastern\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"nature religion\"","block_context":{"text":"nature religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=nature-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7020,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7020","url_meta":{"origin":12568,"position":4},"title":"New Pomegranate Published","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 9, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Issue 16:2 of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies has now been published online, with print copies coming soon. The publisher does charge for articles (but try to see if your library can get them), although book reviews are free downloads. Contents \"Deepening Conversations between Ritual Studies and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"publishing\"","block_context":{"text":"publishing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=publishing"},"img":{"alt_text":"Pomegranate web header","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Pomegranate-web-header.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Pomegranate-web-header.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Pomegranate-web-header.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":13863,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13863","url_meta":{"origin":12568,"position":5},"title":"Talking about “Pagan Religions in 5 Minutes”","author":"Chas S. 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