Marrying the biological and the social raises a complex series of issues that defy easy answer or simple resolution. In this brief rejoinder to Newton's (2003) recent paper in this journal – ‘Truly embodied sociology: marrying the social and the biological?‘– I take up some of these issues through: (i) a restatement of my own position in these debates and the broader sociological context within which it is located; (ii) a discussion of various problems and tensions within Newton's own critique of this ‘nascent material-corporeal’ project to date. Newton's paper, it is concluded, is a welcome, timely and topical contribution to these (evolving) debates, though any such ‘dispute’ is probably more apparent than real: a case, in short, of reinforcing arguments about the complexity of these relations and the consequent need to ‘tread warily’.
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