This text aims to make some reflections on the award of the title of National Intangible Heritage of knowledge, ways of living and making to a few groups located in different regions of Brazil. The object of discussion are the intangible assets already patrimonializated and considered of national importance for the construction of memory, identity and the formation of Brazilian society. In an effort to contribute to the discussion that advocate patrimonialization of intangible assets not only relates to the registration and preservation of customs, ways of doing and knowing of a group or community, but it means an intervention in a whole set of relationships concrete and immediately lived by those groups and communities. As local knowledge, customs, ways of living and making of the groups, they anchor and are being rebuilt in the spaces to which they belong, in affective relations, in lived experiences and in the memories of the groups that keep them alive.
intangible heritage; social psychology; memory