Meanings
plural countercapitals
- A city other than the official capital that serves as a base of power and influence.
From November 1920 on, Sun lived in Canton, which was becoming in the minds of many Chinese a countercapital to the republic's nominal capital at Peking.
1994, Julie Wei, Prescriptions for Saving China, →ISBN, page xx2 more examples
In the last third of the century Medelh'n in fact, as well as in the minds of the antioqueños, stood as an economically based countercapital in the west.
1976, Frank Safford, The ideal of the practical, →ISBN, page 214Over the last fifty years of the century, however, the insurance industry, while remaining vibrant in London, also wandered upcoast to serve the needs of the Liverpool slavers who had begun to dominate the trade and whose city was rapidly becoming another countercapital of this cycle of accumulation.
2005, Ian Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic, page 102 - Possessions, knowledge, and resources that support an alternative to the dominant culture
Hacker spaces dot the unofficial landscapes of San Francisco and Oakland, nurturing support for WikiLeaks and other countercultural (and counter-capital) uses of high tech.
2014, Jon Christensen, Boom Summer 2014: A Journal of California, →ISBN2 more examples
Further, this imported 'counter-habitas' and 'cultural counter-capital' frictionally appreciates as pupils' experiences of schooling penetrate a system which depreciates their cultural currency.
2002, Dr Stephen J Ball, Stephen Ball, Ivor F Goodson, Teachers' Lives And Careers, →ISBNHow then is the collective capital of knowledge, practices and values distributed in medicine. Are there blatant inequalities in distribution and is 'countercapital' produced that is counter-productive to effective medical practice?
2015, Alan Bleakley, Medical Humanities and Medical Education, →ISBN
Origin
Cite this entry
countercapital. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/countercapital
“countercapital.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/countercapital. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “countercapital,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/countercapital.
Source: countercapital on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.