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This article challenges the hegemonic status of 'language' as the primary substance of qualitative research in psychology, be it through interviews or recordings of naturally occurring talk. It thereby questions the overt focus on analyzing linguistic meaning. Instead, it is suggested that researchers should start paying attention to the material world (consisting of both human bodies and material objects) and what it means for how people live their lives. It is argued that this can be achieved by incorporating the concept of material presence to capture embodied and material layers of existence, and the method of participant observation is suggested as a viable approach to achieve this end. An empirical example of how authority is produced in a parent-teacher conference, not only through language but also through material objects and embodied being, is presented. The article concludes by suggesting practical guidelines for incorporating attention to materiality in qualitative research.

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It is an often taken for granted notion in contemporary Western everyday life that there is an intimate connection between empathy and moral action. Yet in recent years, this connection has come under scrutiny. In this article, we first ask the question, what is empathy? A brief survey over the psychological and philosophical approaches to the notion of empathy shows that it remains a highly contested concept. The field has a propensity to discuss empathy within the frame of sameness. We instead argue that in order to grasp empathy it is necessary to foreground otherness. Drawing on Hannah Arendt, we further argue, that when encountering the stranger, moral action requires both visiting the other -as distinct from empathic knowledge as well as thinking in order to judge what is right. Ultimately moral dilemmas are solved, not by having or demanding empathy, but by addressing the issues at hand in joint action.Any justification ends finally with the rationally gratuitous presence of the emotion of sympathy: if that condition were not met, one would simply have no reason to be moral.(Thomas Nagel, cited in Denham, 2017 p. 227).

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