Definition of counterstream
plural counterstreams
or counter-streams
1
: a stream which runs counter to another
- … those concealed rocks which I found when I was out in my boat; and which rocks, as they checked the violence of the stream, and made a kind of counter-stream, or eddy …
- —Daniel Defoe
- … there has been a counterstream of migrants returning from Britain and North America to many parts of the Caribbean …
- —George Gmelch
2
: something (such as a political, cultural, or religious system) that is different from or opposed to the mainstream
- … a convincing argument that the Appalachian religion is an authentic counterstream to modern, mainstream Protestantism.
- —The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture
- But there is a critical difference between counterstream and mainstream cultures. The counterstream cultures lived in harmony with their environment, because they either had to or they chose to.
- —Majda Bastic
