Abstract
International audience Until her imprisonment in 2013 for her involvement in a double corruption case, the former governor of Banten (Indonesia), Atut Chosiyah, was the central figure of the oligarchy developed by her father from the 1970s. He had relied on networks of “strong men” (jawara), martial arts experts and political figures to whom the Bantenese attribute extraordinary powers. With the decentralization and democratization initiated in Indonesia in 1998, the jawara found themselves faced with the need to renew their repertoire of communication. The entrance of a “strong woman” (jawari) into this scene thus responded to the historical imperative for the jawara to articulate their belonging to a claimed regional identity and to effective forms of political action, with an authoritarian tendency and neoliberal inspiration. The portrait of Atut Chosiyah makes it possible to approach the ways in which these socio-political transformations have renewed the scenario developed about and by the strongmen.