The Construction of Social Reality Among The Thrift Shop Vendors at Senen Market

Abstract

The enforcement of Minister of Trade Regulation No. 47 of 2025, which prohibits the importation of used clothing, has disrupted the informal economy of thrift shop vendors at Senen Market, Jakarta. The policy, implemented through confiscation measures by Customs and Excise officers, has generated cognitive dissonance among vendors because of the negative labeling attached to their business activities. This study aimed to analyze how thrift shop vendors negotiated their identities and reconstructed social reality to maintain operational legitimacy amid structural pressures. Using a constructivist paradigm and a qualitative case study approach, the study focused on Block III of Pasar Senen. Primary data were collected through in-depth observations and interviews with key informants, including association representatives and affected vendors, while secondary data were obtained from regulatory documents, statistical reports, and media archives. Data were analyzed using Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s theory of the social construction of reality and Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery’s Relational Dialectics Theory. The findings revealed that vendors actively rejected the stigma of illegality by morally framing their businesses as a source of “halal livelihood” and engaging in discursive resistance to government narratives. In response to legal restrictions that contributed to supply shortages and digital platform blockages, vendors adapted through fragmented, low-visibility marketing strategies conducted in private or semi-private spaces. The study concluded that structural pressures fostered resilient social realities and adaptive hybrid identities among vendors, contributing to a proposed theoretical model of adaptive reality reconstruction and offering practical insights for more inclusive regulatory approaches that take into account the sociocultural realities of informal trading communities.