Leisured Class and Reconfigured Cultural Desire
摘要
This chapter tends to examine the expressions and lifestyle of Dhaka-based middle-class people during the coronavirus period, especially after experiencing mandatory lockdown. Leisure is considered a central concept here for understanding social class, along with some core values or virtuous notions this class tends to exhibit, shown mainly in cyberspace. COVID-19 has caused some crucial situations to expose leisure in intense conditions, and conceptualize and reconfigure it within a complex network of identity, creativity, glory, exhibitionism, and the likes of a particular class. This chapter, apparently, is a modest attempt to analyze the overall middle-class responses in general, and leisure-guaranteed middle-class in particular, towards the forced homestay about their aspirations that form core values of a class. Apart from the global paranoia from the pandemic, a large portion of the Dhaka middle class had appeared agonized, distressed, and irritated from the apparent ‘uselessness’ they initially thought they were into before they found themselves engaged in doing virtuous activities and broadcasting well-intentioned words, through cyberspace.