Health 1–12 © The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1363459315628044 hea.sagepub.com ILLNESS IS WORK: Revisiting the concept of illness careers and recognizing the identity work of patients with ME/CFS Jan Grue University of Oslo, Norway Abstract The concept of careers has an extensive history in the sociology of health and illness. Among other things, the notion of a career has been used to describe the changing identities of patients diagnosed with mental illness, to identify distinct stages in the progression of various illnesses, and to recognize the cooperative efforts of hospitalized patients. However, the career concept may be reanalyzed as part of an analytical metaphor that makes salient both the agency of people with illnesses and the social structures in which they are enmeshed. This metaphor, ILLNESS IS WORK, can valorize and aid understanding of the identity work and actions of patients with chronic illnesses, particularly illnesses with a low degree of social recognition and medical prestige such as myalgic encephalopathy and chronic fatigue syndrome. Keywords chronic illness, disease prestige, identity, illness career, metaphor theory, myalgic encephalopathy and chronic fatigue syndrome Illness careers in the sociology of health and illness The concept of careers definitively entered the sociology of health and illness in 1961, through Erving Goffman’s Asylums. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there are two main meanings of the term career, one of goal-directed and one of neutral pro- gression through time: of an occupation with opportunities for progress or the time spent Corresponding author: Jan Grue, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1096 Blindern, 0371 Oslo, Norway. Email: jangrue@gmail.com 628044HEA 0 0 10.1177/1363459315628044HealthGrue research-article 2016 Article by guest on February 6, 2016 hea.sagepub.com Downloaded from