Intolerant Times: The Disabling Effects of Cultural and Political Economies of Stigma This paper will examine how and why the stigma directed at those in receipt of state welfare has intensified in Britain since the North Atlantic Financial Crisis of 2008. It will consider how stigma is crafted, activated and reproduced as a technology of governance. It will focus on the production of stigma as a means of (re)classifying welfare and welfare recipients, and the disabling effects of these processes. This paper will argue that conditions of heightened stigmatisation are effecting a ‘crisis of tolerance’ undermining the gains of rights based movements, including hard won disability rights. These conditions of growing intolerance are exacting a material and psycho-social toil on targeted populations. This paper finishes by exploring art-activist projects that have been explicitly designed to defend against and resist the economies of stigma that saturate public culture in austere times.