Cooptation
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A co-opting: a commandeering, appropriation, or taking over. countable, uncountable
- 2 A co-opting: an absorption or assimilation. countable, uncountable
"This book is a study of co-optation rather than counterculture, an analysis of the forces and logic that made rebel youth cultures so attractive to corporate decision-makers rather than a study of those cultures themselves. In doing so, it risks running afoul of what I will call the co-optation theory: faith in the revolutionary potential of "authentic" counterculture combined with the notion that business mimics and mass-produces fake counterculture in order to cash in on a particular demographic and to subvert the great threat that "real" counterculture represents."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"This book is a study of co-optation rather than counterculture, an analysis of the forces and logic that made rebel youth cultures so attractive to corporate decision-makers rather than a study of those cultures themselves. In doing so, it risks running afoul of what I will call the co-optation theory: faith in the revolutionary potential of "authentic" counterculture combined with the notion that business mimics and mass-produces fake counterculture in order to cash in on a particular demographic and to subvert the great threat that "real" counterculture represents."
Etymology
From coopt + -ation.
Related phrases
More for "cooptation"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.