Abstract

The present paper is an attempt to examine critically the prevailing approaches in academic arena toward understanding antagonisms, or even worse, hostilities as have fermented in and even manifested at interpersonal and societal levels among provincial peoples against each other. Two most popular and distinctive approaches, that is, "social-structural" one as taken predominantly in socialogical circle and "stereotypic" one as espoused exclusively in psychological camp were criticized for both being reying on static, rational model in which considerations on more subtle, interactional, social-psychological processes are perforce dismissed. Discussions on alternative understandings in terms of social psychological processes were made with suppolive inferences from phenomenal analysis of I he examplay socio-political events which have appeared with functional bearings on interprovincial antagonism and hostility. Finally, propositions explicating "how-processes" associated with exacerbation and hoped-for reduction in antagonism and hostility were proposed.