countercapital

English

Etymology

counter- +‎ capital

Noun

countercapital (plural countercapitals)

1. A city other than the official capital that serves as a base of power and influence.
   • 1976, Frank Safford, The ideal of the practical, →ISBN, page 214:

     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.

   • 1994, Julie Wei, Prescriptions for Saving China, →ISBN, page xx:

     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.

   • 2005, Ian Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic, page 102:

     Over 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.

2. Possessions, knowledge, and resources that support an alternative to the dominant culture
   • 2002, Dr Stephen J Ball, Stephen Ball, Ivor F Goodson, Teachers' Lives And Careers, →ISBN:

     Further, this imported 'counter-habitas' and 'cultural counter-capital' frictionally appreciates as pupils' experiences of schooling penetrate a system which depreciates their cultural currency.

   • 2014, Jon Christensen, Boom Summer 2014: A Journal of California, →ISBN:

     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.

   • 2015, Alan Bleakley, Medical Humanities and Medical Education, →ISBN:

     How 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?