“Knowing these stories”

Abstract

In this article, I explore the ways participants in underground dance music (UDM) scenes learn about the political, historical, and social context of their leisure pursuit, such as its queer-of-colour roots, gender dynamics, and economic structures. Semi-structured interviews and information horizon mapping with three Toronto UDM scene members revealed that the online and physical spaces of UDM served as information grounds for the participants’ initial serendipitous discovery of social context information, which led to further intentional seeking in books, libraries, and beyond. Established UDM information sources and normative expectations shaped the participants’ information behaviour, leading them to infer the political stances of DJs and other scene participants based on musical taste and identity. Finally, social context information shapes the participants' experiences of UDM, affecting their sense of community, safety, and belonging. The serious leisure perspective has thus far focused on information behaviours related to the pursuit of the hobby itself, such as, in the present context, finding events or learning to DJ. This study opens up a new direction by considering how social context information flows through and shapes the social world of the hobby. As rising mainstream awareness of structural oppressions leads to more people and communities considering how these oppressions manifest in every aspect of their lives, this perspective will be germane to information behaviour studies in several contexts.