Résumé
In Switzerland, voluntary commitment in sport associations is considerably widespread.
Moreover, it proves to be particularly necessary to the two sports we put our focus on in this inquiry, namely baton twirling and women’s football, both suffering a lack of
legitimacy at the social and sports level. In this paper, which reports an ethnography
of six clubs showing no elitist aspiration, we observe that their members struggle to
obtain acknowledgement for their work and progress. Assuming that these associative
commitments constitute a significant modality of social investment, we demonstrate that
they enable minority groups not only to remain in an organised sport activity, but also, and mainly, allow them to construct a critical look to their social environment, according to the standpoint theory developed by Dorothy Smith.