"In Sick Work, Emily Lim Rogers examines what it means to be ill through a historical and ethnographic study of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). First formally recognized by the United States in the 1980s, ME/CFS is a serious, debilitating disease that is defined by post-exertional malaise and lacks specific biological causes or diagnostic markers. Several overlapping factors make it difficult to receive a diagnosis of ME/CFS (especially for working-class people of color): it takes an enormous amount of work-as Rogers puts it, "sick work"-to be recognized as sick. The volume explores and analyzes the history of the disease and the experiences of those suffering from ME/CFS to show how medical diagnoses emerge (or not) and become visible or invisible in the United States today. By situating ME/CFS in embodied political economy, Rogers traces how medical diagnoses form in dialectical relation to the ways that formations of labor, the family, and the state debilitate or capacitate bodies through the uneven distribution of resources, care, and violence. Ultimately, Rogers argues that formations of labor, the family, and the state shape not only the experience of illness, but who can be ill in the first place"-- Provided by publisher.