Of Leisured Lifestyle: Cyber-dwellers of Dhaka City in the Lockdown

Abstract

Conceptualising leisure as an integral feature to class formation should have been an easier Marxist understanding. This, however, is not the case. While I do not accuse the academics and party-scholars for remaining too schematic, I always find it easier in front of the undergraduate students, or any ‘commoner’ whatever that means, to bring leisure (Veblen 1953)1 as a defining attribute for some clearer understanding of social class. Leisure should be seen as a direct consequence of surplus value (Marx 1969).2 Putting in context, COVID-19 caused situation not only in identifying leisure in intense condition but also conceptualising and reconfiguring it within complex network of identity, creativity, glory, exhibitionism and the likes of a particular class. Attempts are rare in academic and polemic discussions for analysing the middle-class responses in general, and leisure-seeking middle class in particular, regarding the forced homestay in relation to their aspirations that form core values of a class. Apart from the global paranoia of the pandemic, a large portion of the Dhaka’s middle class had appeared agonised,