This article re-engages with Paul Rabinow’s Reflections on fieldwork in Morocco, originally published in 1977, to consider the ways in which social inequalities frame the possibilities and outcomes of fieldwork. It also reflects on the ways in which both social inequalities and the possibilities of field research have changed from the 1980s to the present, requiring that anthropologists reproblematize the practice of fieldwork. These reflections are based on the author’s long-term research in the peripheries of Sao Paulo.