Sick Work: Exhaustion, Labor, and Invisible Illness (ANIMA: Critical Race Studies Otherwise) - Softcover

Emily Lim Rogers

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1478039035 ISBN 13: 9781478039037

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2026

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Emily Lim Rogers is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1478039035
• ISBN 13: 9781478039037
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 216