  In this work the phenomenon of charge confinement is approached in various
contexts. An universal criterion for the identification of this phenomenon in
Abelian gauge theories is suggested: the so-called spontaneous breaking of the
brane symmetry. This local symmetry has its most common manifestation in the
Dirac string ambiguity present in the electromagnetic theory with monopoles.
The spontaneous breaking of the brane symmetry means that the Dirac string
becomes part of a brane invariant observable which hides the realization of
such a symmetry and develops energy content in the confinement regime. The
establishment of this regime can be reached through the condensation of
topological defects. The effective theory of the confinement regime can be
obtained with the Julia-Toulouse prescription which (originally introduced as
the dual mechanism to the Abelian Higgs Mechanism) is generalized in this paper
in order to become fully compatible with Elitzur's theorem and describe more
general condensates which may break Lorentz and discrete spacetime symmetries.
This generalized approach for the condensation of defects is presented here
through a series of different applications.
