Sick Work

Exhaustion, Labor, and Invisible Illness

By: Emily Lim Rogers

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Paperback | 1 September 2026

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240 Pages

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15.0 x 22.9 x 1.5

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In Sick Work, Emily Lim Rogers shows the unpaid labor it takes to be recognized as sick in the United States. Through a historical and ethnographic account of myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS)—a disease defined by disproportionate exhaustion after any form of exertion, which has no cure or treatment—she reveals how changing formations of labor decide what counts as disability and what does not. Sickness, she writes, is not work’s opposite. Rather, the frequent dismissal of their disease leaves people with ME/CFS to do their own labor of disease advocacy, or “sick work,” even as their symptoms prevent many from working paid jobs. Rogers presents a history of the discursive construction of chronic fatigue and demonstrates its development alongside capitalism since the dawn of industrial management science in the late nineteenth century. These histories, she argues, echo through to the present day, shaping the denial of me/cfs and the stigma that surrounds it. Examining the everyday lives of people with ME/CFS and their activist movements, Sick Work describes how they swim upstream against strong tides of disbelief and demands a radical transformation of how work is defined and valued.

Industry Reviews

"Sick Work is a revelatory, original historiography and ethnography, the first full-length work on ME/CFS. Its framework of energy and exhaustion offers a new way to think about the embodied experience of social reproduction and illness under capitalism. This book makes significant contributions to medical anthropology and sociology, disability studies, history of medicine, and beyond."-Zoe H. Wool, author of, After War: The Weight of Life at Walter Reed

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