Target Markets: International Terrorism Meets Global Capitalism in the Mall (Culture & Theory)

This book explores the points of convergence between corporate capitalist and terrorist practice. Assessing an increase in the number of terrorist attacks directed at commercial entities in urban areas, with an emphasis on the shopping mall in general and Nairobi's Westgate Mall in particular, Suzi Mirgani offers a fascinating and disturbing perspective on the spaces where the most powerful forces of contemporary culture - the most mainstream and the most extreme - meet on common ground.
Headline after recent headline has been broadcasting the increase in terrorist attacks being launched in urban areas all over the world. Many of these attacks have targeted centrally-located businesses and commercial entities in metropolitan spaces, whether the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, the public transport systems of London and Madrid, hotels in Mumbai, Tunis, and Ouagadougou, restaurants and cafés in Kampala, Copenhagen, and Sydney, or, more recently, the Charlie Hebdo offices, the Hyper Cacher supermarket, and the Bataclan concert hall in Paris. Urban terrain and populated central city spaces comprised of shopping centers, hotels, transport hubs, concert halls, cafes, theaters, and restaurants have become, in effect, “the battlegrounds of the future. And the urban siege, with its commando-style tactics and guerrilla infiltration of a big city’s ebb and flow, is increasingly the tactic of choice for a wide range of adversaries.